


No Gods, No Masters, Just Me

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: A couple OCs - Freeform, Adventure, All headcannon all the time, Anonymous Sex, Bad Jokes, Bad Plans, Beer, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes getting his feet in the modern world, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Donuts, Emotional Trauma, Fighting, Flashbacks, Food, Friendship, Gobs and gobs of UST, Graphic Depictions of Torture, Graphic Description of Injury, Grief, Guns, Hamburgers, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Modern Era, Multi-Part, Not Canon Compliant, Oral Sex, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Physical autonomy, Piercings, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Sass, Some Steve feels, Suicidal Thoughts, Tattoos, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, at last we finally get to the kissing, bucky barnes has a foul mouth, bucky pov, clint you dummy, embarassed bucky, memory is not linear, mentions of Jim Morita, mentions of death by fire, natasha romanov - Freeform, quaint slang, recovery is not linear, self-hate, temporarily skinny steve, things not going as planned, too few snuggles, tracksuit mafia - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 28,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes is free. No gods, no masters. It's going to be a god damned shit show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not all parts will have smut, but all smut will have parts IF YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN.

The first thing he does after the transition, after the hospital and the terror, and the agony of narcotic withdrawal and the agony of comprehension, of all that was done to him and all that he did, the first thing he does is ask, “Am I free?”

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says in that slightly rough voice, the voice he used to get after a bout of pneumonia had him coughing and in bed and menthol smeared on his chest for a week or more. It used to be weird, hearing such a low voice coming from such a little body. Now the voice fits, and it’s the body that’s wrong. “Yeah, you’re free.”

Steve’s no liar. His habit of unrestrained honesty landed him with a busted nose more than once in the past, and from what he’s seen of Steve, the Steve that Bucky hangs on to when the world lurches under his feet, when he’s sickened by himself, when he screams, well, time hasn’t even scratched a nail on much less eroded that part of him.

“So I can do anything now?” Bucky says. "Anything I want?"

“Inside of the law,” Steve says. Cautious. He’s got all of Bucky’s worldly possessions in a sports bag hanging off one arm, and he’s opening the door to his apartment, their apartment now, no, he’s not ready to think of it like that yet, he’s opening the door to the apartment with the other hand. He’s watching Bucky as he does it. Just from the corner of his eye. And there’s the faintest smile curling up the corner of his mouth.

“Course,” Bucky says, shrugging with one shoulder since the other shoulder, and everything that attaches to it, is in a lab somewhere possibly in DC, and his new arm isn’t ready. “Course I'll say inside the law. This place is gonna be crawling.”

“It’s not bugged,” Steve says. “Special request.”

Bucky snorts.

For a minute he thinks Steve might say something else, but instead Steve sighs and shrugs and pushes open the door. Both of them look inside. Brick walls, and not too bad a space. Good view, the lights from outside throwing enough illumination inside that neither of them really need the lights on, but Steve flicks them on anyway. Bucky tries not to look for points of ingress and egress, and fails. Steve sees him fail.

“Bedroom’s that way,” he says, “Fire escape,” he adds. Bucky nods. When Steve goes over and opens the closet door for no reason at all, Bucky grins.

“You’re just as paranoid as I am,” he says and it’s not a question and it's not a jab. There is comfort in shared unease. This world is full of things that are too rich, too perfect, too good for two poor boys who never had nothing and lost it all anyway. Steve smiles a small, wry smile, and Bucky suspects with a thrill that expression is a secret between them.

Steve sets him up. Offers him the big bed in the bedroom but Bucky shakes his head. He wants the floor under him, and the hard security of bricks at his back, so Steve kits him out on the floor beside the couch, where he’s got a view of the windows, the way to the bedroom, and the door to the hall. He’s got a feeling Steve’s slept there himself some times. It's a good spot.

Once Bucky’s unpacked his possessions -- plastic toothbrush (orange), comb (also plastic), coat, ball cap, slim and battered copy of _Tales of the Amazing Future_ that assured him everybody would have flying bicycles by the year 2000 and which Steve brought him as a joke but which he loves and reads and rereads -- Steve takes him around the apartment, then sits him on a stool in the kitchen and starts in on making dinner.

“Oh. Your keys,” Steve says, sliding a little ring and two keys across the counter as the steak cooks in the pan. They're having steak and potatoes, just like Steve promised when things were bad. That was right around the time Bucky asked the counsellor if you could die from misery and then they took away his shoes and his belt and Steve stayed three nights in a row, catching a couple hours a night sleeping on two chairs pushed together while Bucky lay on the bed and tried real hard to will his heart to just give up.

It had been late, Steve’s words getting a little slurred with weariness. _There’s this really great butcher down the road from where I live. Steaks as thick as a mattress. When you're better and you can come live with me, I’ll get us some. Best steak you ever ate.  
_

 _And potatoes,_ Bucky had said, tired too, and suddenly hungry for the first time in, god, maybe ever. _Potatoes._ _Fried, like…_ like something he couldn’t remember. _Fried,_ he said again, aware that some very small part of him wanted that, wanted something. The doctors said wanting something, even a little, was a good sign. They told him there would be good days and there would be bad days, and he should try to lay up good things in the future, so he had stuff to look forward to. Must have told Steve that too because he’d smiled in the dark.

 _Yeah. Potatoes like Mrs Fitzwilliam used to make._ Crispy and golden on the outside, but fluffy inside. _That’s what we’ll have to celebrate when you’re better. Steak and potatoes. And I'll get you a set of keys too._

“My keys,” Bucky says, while Steve portions out the potatoes.

“The silver one is the building door, and the brass one is the apartment.”

Steak and potatoes, and keys to the place. As if it was easy. He takes the keys and turns them over. They're sharp, recently cut, so new there's still a burr of metal sticking to one.

"This is your place now," Steve says.

"It's not my place," Bucky says, nodding thanks for the plate of food that Steve passes him. "But thanks."

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky eats some things and gets a present from a lady.

Bucky’s outside, on the street, just… being there. It’s late in the evening, the sun low, yellow-orange-pink and streaming between buildings. The air is hot and thick. People coming and going, and there are probably agents around keeping an eye on him, but they must be good because he doesn’t see them. He is, more or less, alone.

Desire floods him. He wants to walk. He wants donuts and coffee. He wants pizza. Not the soggy slab of bread with a smear of tomato sauce and a little baked cheese on top, the new pizza, with crust full of cheese and half a pig on top. He wants to see a picture, a _movie_ , no - one of the colossal ones, a what do you call it? An Imax film. The ones Steve told him about when things were bad. _We’ll go see one, maybe the week after you get out_ , he’d said.

 _The screen is the whole theatre?_ Bucky’d asked again, because it seemed kind of impossible.

 _Well, most of it. Whole field of vision anyway._

There’s a theatre not far away, but that’s for next week. He’s exploring this week. Learning the neighbourhood.

Steve gave him more money than Bucky’s ever held in his lifetime and a small portable telephone that he knows how to use, and a square of paper with the apartment address on it. Like Bucky’s some little squirt who needs dummy mitts. He even came to the door with him.

“And call me if… anything,” Steve says.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Easy, pops, you’re gettin’ all choked up. Don’t worry, I’ll be back by ten. And I won't bring any ladies back with me, don't worry.”

Steve goes a little bit red. One point for Bucky. He winks at Steve.

“Don’t forget to wipe the lipstick off your dick between rounds,” Steve says, deadpan.

Bucky can’t stop the look of surprise and Steve’s head comes up, a smug little twist to his lips. One point to Steve Rogers.

“Your ma’d wash your mouth out with the carbolic if she heard you talking like that, Rogers,” he says, all mock horror. “Anyway, a gentleman _always_ wipes his dick off.”

Steve snorts.

“Ten,” Bucky says again, because he feels like he owes it to Steve to give him a point after which he can start worrying, because otherwise he’ll worry all damn night.

 

This arrangement they’ve got, this re-introducing Bucky to normal human company, well, Bucky’s pretty sure it’s going to end in disaster. Steve’s a sucker for a good deed, but Bucky always pegged him as smarter than this, taking on somebody whose brains are scrambled, it's a bad plan. He knows the counsellor told him so on the day he was discharged, he heard the man say Bucky _Might prove to be a danger to himself or others._ And Steve said, _That's ridiculous._ As if Bucky hadn't been a killer for the better part of the century.

Bucky should probably lay off Steve, not tease him so bad, but it used to be he and Steve had callus where they butted heads. It’d be a kindness, Bucky thinks, to put that callus back on for him before… before the court marshal or the treason trial, or whatever’s going to happen to Bucky happens to him, and they get split up again. Steve might be working hard not to see what's coming, but Bucky's got no illusions. He's done bad things and he's going to have to pay for them. This is a little sop before the shit hits. Kind of like a cigarette before the firing squad.

 

He goes walking and pretty quick he finds the butcher that sold Steve the steaks. Out of curiosity, he has a look and almost chokes at the _cost_ of them. When the guy in the apron and hairnet asks if he wants anything, Bucky says, “How much is a pound of bacon?”

“Fifteen bucks,” the guy tells him. The creep doesn’t even blush.

Bucky says something unsuitable for polite company and takes off. No wonder Steve gave him enough money to pay a couple month's rent in the old place. You'd have to be a millionaire to live in New York now.

 

 

A couple storefronts along the road, he gets those donuts he wanted. The Technicolor extravaganza of the sprinkles and the glazes makes him stammer at the till. “What’s the best one?” he asks, because, sure, there’s _old fashioned_ but what in God’s name is a _Chilean Chocolate Diablo_ and is that a candied Scotch Bonnet on top of it?

Turns out it was, and he has to get up and order a glass of milk. They give him a little bottle and the girl doesn’t bother to count back his change. He’s glad Steve gave him so much money, because everything’s incredibly expensive. Inflation. He remembers old folks talking about how _back in my day_ and it drove him nuts hearing about it all the time. He decides he’s never going to talk about it. Things cost what they cost.

Anyway, he’s fascinated by the way things are. They’re weird. The world turned into a freakshow while he was working and he kind of likes it. Take, for example, the guy sitting beside him at the bench that looks out the donut shops windows. He’s a big fellow, a little taller than Bucky, maybe not quite as tall as Steve. He’s got tattoos as intricate and brilliant as paisley on his arms, earlobes stretched out and plugged with something that might be bone or bakelite if people still use it, and a huge metal rivet through his nose. He glances at Bucky and Bucky keeps on looking. Like the Tattooed Man at the carnival. But nobody here cares. Nobody even looks twice at him.

“You like staring?” the guy asks.

“That thing in your nose,” Bucky says. “Did that hurt?”

The guy smiles a tired, bored kind of smile. “Not much. This one, though,” he says and reaches down and unzips his pants, there in the donut shop, and grabs himself and pulls his penis out through the slit in his underwear and there’s a metal bar right through his dick. Bucky winces. “That one did,” the guy says. Then he tucks himself away and looks at Bucky again, like maybe he’s not really sure what to make of him. He nods at Bucky, at his left side. “That hurt?”

“Yeah,” Bucky answers.

The guy leans back in his chair and smiles faintly. “You know, when I get my dick out in public, one of two things usually happen,” he says. “People freak out, or they offer to blow me. You didn't freak out. You want to go somewhere?”

And, for not the first time today, Bucky’s speechless. Even in the dirtiest little dives, even when he was desperate for it, nobody ever said it like that. It’s so casual and so easy, this thing that nobody’s ever supposed to know about. The guy leans a little closer to him.

“I know a quiet spot not that far away,” he says. He tilts his head a little at Bucky and Bucky knows that look because he used to be the asshole wearing that expression. It’s been such a long time since anybody asked, since it was up to him. Since he wanted to feel that weight in his mouth. And wanting things, wanting things is a good thing. Healthy. Wanting things is how he knows he’s getting better.

“Okay,” he says. It’s stupid, he knows people are watching him, but his blood rushes at the thought of it. “It’s been a hell of a long time, though,” he adds.

The guy takes his hand, just like that, in public, and they walk together through the evening, where the purple and yellow and orange are fading to blue. His heart is pounding in his chest and in his ears and in his groin and he’s hard in his pants when the guy pulls him into a narrow little alley that doglegs a bit toward the back. He tells himself to forget the watchers, wherever they are. This hasn’t happened it a long time. This might never happen again. He can explain, if he has to. He’ll come up with something.

The guy leans against the wall and undoes his pants again and Bucky goes down to his knees. The guy watches him, heavy-eyed. “You’re good looking,” he says, working his hardening erection in one hand. “Why’s it been so long?”

Bucky shakes his head. “None of your business.”

“Guess not,” he says. He holds his dick for Bucky and Bucky gets in close, soft, damp skin sliding across his cheek, the warm metal of the piercing. He inhales, the scent mingling with the trash and the asphalt. Evening in summer. A stranger in an alley. Steve oblivious in an apartment somewhere. It’s 1940 all over again.

He’s got this fantasy. It’s an old fantasy, but it came back along with everything else. Along with the postal code of the old place, and the cemetery reference number for the Rogers’ family graves, and the recipe for banana salad, there was this fantasy.

He imagines it’s Steve in his mouth, hands threaded in his hair, he imagines he’s just got his first set of orders, and this time instead of turning yellow-bellied, he’s told Steve everything and Steve, Steve’s told him it’s okay and he forgives him, or, no, better, Steve’s told him he’s been _waiting_ for Bucky to say something. He says he always knew and it doesn’t bother him, and he’ll be his fella, no, Steve’s not like that, not like him. More likely he’s said he knows and it’s okay and he’s told Bucky he can do anything he wants, because tonight is going to be his last night Stateside and Steve’ll do anything for him, a favour for a friend. So Bucky gets down on his knees and takes him into his mouth just like this and _oh god_ , it’s been so long since he wanted this and he’d forgotten how much he likes it. He hardly gets himself out of his pants before he’s groaning on what’s in his mouth and coming and the guy is saying, _Oh fuck yeah_ and rolling his hips. And Steve, in his fantasy Steve is whispering his name, _Buck, Buck…_ and telling Bucky he loves this, telling Bucky he loves _him_.

And that's where the fantasy ends, because Bucky knows Steve loves him, just like he knows Steve doesn’t love him like that.

Steve used to let Bucky strip him off and get him into a cold bath when he had a fever, or a hot shower when his lungs were bad. He used to let Bucky chuck him under the chin and grab him around the shoulders and call him names. Bucky’s got no doubt that Steve would have endured a confession of love, maybe even let Bucky do this with him, because they were friends, best friends. Which is exactly why Bucky could never, ever ask.

Afterward, still wiping the mess from his knuckles and his mouth, he asks the guy where he got the piercing. The guy grins.

“My ex boyfriend works at Clive’s,” he says, and when Bucky shakes his head a little he shrugs. “Tattoo and piercing parlour, couple blocks east. Taji’s good at what he does and… he’s a good guy,” he adds, “but we were bad for each other. You want to get one?”

It’s his body. It’s the first time in almost a century it’s been his body.

“Yeah,” he says. “What’s something like that cost?”

The guy looks at him a while. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asks. Then he nods. “Apadravya’s usually about a hundred and fifty bucks.”

Bucky nods. He thinks about the money he’s got. So much money. He could actually cover it. And who knows when he's going to get called to account for his past? Maybe now is a better time than later. Later might not come.  


The guy sees him thinking and he laughs. “You’re so clean cut I thought you were a fucking Mormon at first.” He shakes his head. “But you give head like a pro.”

Bucky frowns.

“That’s a compliment, man. I do this a lot and I’ll tell you what: That was easily top ten. Hey, uh, you go get your dong pierced, do yourself a favour? Don’t tell Taji that you got his name when you sucked his ex-boyfriend’s cock, okay? This little hobby of mine was part of our problem.”

Bucky nods.

 

***

 

He’s leaving the alley, a little dazed still, a little too warm and too languid in the hot summer air when somebody gets out of one of those cars that’s a huge, angular thing, the kind the growls when it goes by. He, no, _she_ closes the door and then comes like a cat after a bird toward him. He waits. She’s built strong, red-haired, and he can tell, in spite of her sunglasses, superfluous now that the sun is so low, that she’s looking at him.

“Barnes,” she says. He is not surprised to find she knows him. This must be one of the agents set up to make sure he doesn’t go AWOL or Jack the Ripper or something. She’s got a little white plastic bag in one hand, a drugstore logo on it.

“I don’t think we’ve met, miss…?” he leaves the question hanging in the hopes she’ll give her name.

She pulls off her sunglasses and smiles and the breath comes out of his lungs because he knows her, and in this world he doesn’t know anything, not really, not like he knows her. God, she is… she was a Widow… he remembers. Milk skin, green eyes, hair red, red like blood, like paint, like the sky the morning of an almighty thunderstorm. She saved his life, maybe more than once.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “Did they leave you with that, or did you get it back?”

“It’s coming back,” he answers, knowing she means _memory_ , knowing she’s thinking, too, about the last time they saw one another. He’s still out of breath, stunned.

“You got a sec? There are a couple things I want to tell you about. It’s okay,” she adds, voice soft and kind. “SHIELD wanted to make sure you were covered, and there are only a couple people Steve trusts to do it. I’m one of those people.”

He nods.

“So I _watch_ , Barnes,” she says, a little more pointedly. “And the things I see raise some concerns.”

He goes cold. Whatever else happens, he has to keep Steve clear of this. “Look, about that, it was a one time thing. I… just thought I’d try it out, you know?”

She watches him. She always did have the ability to go so still and he always envied her that. He, on the other hand, babbles.  


“Anyway, it’s not my thing. But you-”

“Sure looked like it was,” she says over him, and he loses the thread. She shrugs at him. “I won’t tell Steve. I won’t tell anybody if that’s what you want.”

“I’m not like that,” he says, knowing it’s stupid as he does it, she _saw him_ , but he doesn’t care. He can’t let Steve get caught in something this ugly. It’s not just that it’s illegal, Steve would forgive that. It’s that Steve’s done so much for him, and Steve might be physically big now, and healthy and strong, but he’s like glass inside sometimes. Bucky doesn’t be the one to break him. “It was… I’m not a fairy. I mean,” he puts on a grin, “I can prove it right now, if you’ve got the time.”

She pulls a breath in through her nose and for a second he thinks she’s going to take a swing at him. She doesn’t, but she must be angry, she’s just hiding it well. Of course she’s angry. Imagine having to put something like that into a report, imagine having to tell your boss, _Turns out Barnes is an invert, sir_. All that effort to fix his brain and there’s still something not right about him. She’s doing him a favour, a big favour, and if she gets found out it might cost her. He ought to be grateful, because she could drop him in it, and Steve would get dirty too.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” she says quietly, and then seems to think better of it. Instead, she pushes the bag into his hand. “This is for you, from me.”

He sighs. “Look,” he says, “I didn’t mean to-”

“Say 'thank you'."

"Thank you," he says.

"Good. Now stop talking.”

He does. She waits, so he looks into the bag. There’s a little box in there. He reads the label and then _stares_ at Natasha, because a minute ago he had no idea it was possible to be so embarrassed you wanted to be dead, but he does now. His face feels like it's on fire. “You bought me a box of johnnies?”

She nods.

“I don’t care who you play with as long as they’re excited to be there and you play safe,” she says. “Things have changed. Welcome to the future.” Then she turns around and starts to go.

He codfishes after her for a good three seconds. “Wait!” he manages to croak before she can get into her car. “You give me this a-and then just _leave?_ ”

She laughs. Rich and warm and everything he remembers. “Give it up, Barnes,” she calls, “You’re not really on the market.”

He stares long after she’s gone, face flaming. He wants to know what she meant by that. He wants to know what she means by 'times have changed'.

He wants to know if these are the reusable kind or the disposable ones, and who the hell he can ask about that, because he sure isn't going to ask Steve.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky gets his dick pierced.

 

After his face cools off, he goes into the book shop near by and gets a news magazine, a _news_ magazine, not a plastic-wrapped one from the high shelves, and he only does it so he can have another bag to put the bag of johnnies into, because the pharmacy bag feels like it might be the opposite of discreet. What else could possibly come in a box that size and from a pharmacist? He feels like everybody on the street and the clerk at the book store knows he’s carrying the box around.

When he’s got the magazine and the bag he takes himself over to a little shop where something smells delicious and he asks, “What’s good?” and doesn’t know the word the woman says, but buys it anyway, and it is good. Spicy, makes him sweat, but it’s good. She brings him out a little dish of vanilla ice cream after too, and winks at him and he suddenly wonders if she’s seen what he’s got in the plastic bag and is forming _ideas_. He cleans the dish, it’s ice cream, you don’t let that go to waste, and says thanks and hurries away.

He got directions to the piercing parlour from the guy in the alley, and even though it seems a little crazy, he decides to go. It’s his body, and he can do what he wants with it. And if putting a metal rod through his dick is what he wants, then he’s damn well going to do it. Considering all the shit people have done to him, the enhancements they attached to him, the drugs they put in him, the way the beat him and they raped him, putting a rod through his dick seems like a pretty little thing. Like writing a name on the inside of a hat.

He keeps an eye out for the car and for Natasha again, but he knows her, and he knows if she doesn’t want to be seen, she won’t be. She’s probably up in a nest somewhere, laughing about the johnnies. Well, since she’s going to keep his habits to herself, it’s the least he can do to amuse her a bit.

He finds the piercing parlour and by the time he does so much has happened that he’s forgotten the word the guy used to describe the piercing, but he remembers the name, _Taji_. He asks at the front desk. “A… friend said he could do a …” this is a lady he’s talking to. Bucky looks for a polite word. “A friend said he could do a, uh, a private piercing.”

The woman frowns for a moment. “Huh? _Oh._ You mean on your penis? Sure. What kind do you want?”

He opens and closes his mouth. Okay. Women say 'penis' in casual conversation now. “I can’t remember what it’s called. It, uh…” he balks at the idea of trying to explain the piercing anatomically.

“No problem. We’ve got a book.”

She pulls out a book full of blue pictures. This seems crazy. Having these kind of pictures used to get you arrested, now it’s just under the desk at a tattoo parlour. Or wrapped in plastic on a high shelf at the book shop. Not that he was thinking about buying one.

He looks through the book till he finds what he thinks might even be the dick he was sucking on earlier, and, maybe because it’s not very common, Taji, a slim guy with clever brown eyes, big arm tattoos, and black hair buzzed down to nothing, says he’ll do it there and then, if Bucky’s sure he wants it.

Bucky says he’s sure. He makes an excuse and goes to the bathroom and uses the opportunity to get cleaned up, and then sits down to wait. There’s a tiny, ugly dog that breathes like Steve used to in winter, and he plays with it for a bit and then leafs through some magazines. When they pierce him, there’s a crowd standing around to watch. It’s not a piercing that gets done a lot, Taji tells him, and there are a couple people in the place who’ve never done one. They’re all gathered round like it's a family event.

Taji pulls on a pair of gloves. “It’s gonna hurt man, you know that right?” he asks.

Bucky gestures to his missing arm. “Nothin’s going to be as bad as that was.”

“Okay,” Taji says. Then it’s like being under the doctor’s hands, a little anyway. They put a tube into him, like when he was drug-addled and in the hospital and strapped down to the bed, and then they put a needle in. There’s pain, hot and white, and he waits for a second for the emptiness that comes with pain, but it doesn’t follow. It’s just pain.

“Okay,” Taji says, “now the catheter comes out, right? And the needle…”

“Oooh,” someone says, like they’re understanding a math problem.

“Yeah, so you know it’s straight. Then the jewellery. Okay, buddy, that’s it. How you doing?”

It seems a weird question to ask after sticking a needle through a guy's dick. There were times on the table or in the chair when people did terrible things to him, and never asked that question afterward. Bucky raises his head and looks around. The pierced and tattooed faces regard him with genuine concern, a little curiosity, but he doesn’t see fear or malice. Bucky moves his arm a little; there’s nothing to stop him. Part of him thought the pain might make him panic, but he’s calm. He looks down. His dick is red, and starting to swell, and there’s a metal bar through it.

“It’s fine,” he says. It’s _almost_ true. It hurts like the most savage of playground accidents, but it’s not pain-of-death, just pain, and it’s not taking anything away from him, it just is. Finite and manageable. 

“Okay,” Taji says. He grins. “Certified tough guy. Well, just hang out for about fifteen minutes, okay? Sometimes people go into shock. You want some tea or something?”

“Sure,” he says and shrugs.

They baby him. They talk about the piercing with him ( _First piercing? First?! Well, go big or go home, I guess.)_ He gets instructions, detailed instructions, about how to look after his own equipment, as if his dick is a gun that needs to be disassembled and cleaned sometimes. He frowns and Taji shakes his head at him. “I’m serious, man, you do _not_ want an infection in that.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Bucky says. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t had an infection since the 1940s. Taji looks really earnest, and he doesn’t want the effort of caring to have been wasted.

Bucky drinks the tea and lets the ugly little dog come snuffle him. He watches the clock, and when fifteen minutes is up he calls over, “Hey, Taji? Free to go?”

Taji nods. “Yeah, you look okay. Come back if it gives you any problems.”

He gets up and goes, wincing a little with every step. Taji laughs.

“Take some ibuprofen,” he says. “It’ll help with the swelling. And no fucking till it’s healed, like I said,” he adds.

“Thanks ma,” Bucky shouts back and Taji laughs.

 

 

When he gets back to the apartment, Steve’s sitting on the couch. Bucky notices the way he stops himself from jumping up, holds himself still. Bucky drags himself in. He is wearing the wrong underwear for this and his pants are way too tight right now and his dick _hurts._

“Everything okay?” Steve asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Good. Don’t ask. I’m gonna… go get a shower.”

Steve gets up. “Buck,” he starts and then stops.

“Look, I got kicked in the balls, okay?” On his way home he decided he would not, under any circumstances, tell Steve he went to a parlour and got a steel rod put through his dick because he wanted to be in charge of his body. So he decided on this. This lie, it’s a crappy one, but it’s going to have to do. “Look, I’m not going to tell you about the circumstances. I just need a cold shower.”

Steve stands for a minute as if frozen in place, and Bucky realizes the tension in Steve’s mouth is a suppressed smile. “Oh go ahead and laugh you jerk,” he says and Steve does. It’s laughter far out of proportion to how funny the situation is. At least half of that laughter is relief. Thank god he doesn’t know about Natasha and the johnnies.

“I told you to wipe the lipstick off,” Steve says and it takes a second and then Bucky starts laughing too. He laughs so hard he doubles up and there’s no extra give in his pants, not just now.

“Ow, ow. Jesus, stop, I’m a wounded man.”

“There’s clean towels in the cupboard,” Steve manages, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand.

Bucky grimaces acknowledgement and makes his way to the bathroom.

“You need a steak to put on that?” Steve calls after him, voice rising with false innocence and concern. “Or maybe some ice?”

“I need you to button it, Rogers,” Bucky shouts back and closes the bathroom door. Steve’s going to laugh himself sick. Bucky might too, if laughing didn’t hurt in particularly sensitive regions. He’s not exactly sure why he thought this was a good idea any more.

He turns on the water, gets his pants off and gets in. The cold is bliss.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky hears some bad news, and Steve makes a decision.

 

 

The Imax is too much. He starts shivering as soon as the lights go down, and by the time the soundcheck starts up, he’s gulping air. When the huge screen finally comes to life, Bucky feels like he’s falling again, weightless and scrabbling for something, anything. He can see with perfect clarity the look on Steve’s face as Steve realizes that his best friend has just died, even though his heart’s still beating and his arms and legs are still twisting, and he’s screaming as he falls. He can see him turn away and remembers thinking that if Steve Rogers has given up, it really is over.

He must be making noises or something, because Steve’s threading one arm over his shoulders and saying, “Buck? You okay?” and then, when he can’t answer, he hears Steve whisper, “Okay, I got you.”

“No,” Bucky says because it’s wrong, he didn’t, that was what happened, that was what went wrong.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Come on, up.” Steve gets him out of the theatre.

 

Outside, blinking in the sunshine, Bucky feels like a heel. “Sorry,” he says, his voice still ragged and his breath still coming in gasps.

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve answers. He stretches his legs out in front of him and leans against the back of the bench and squints at the sky, neck exposed, eyes mostly closed. Sometimes Bucky wonders how he can be so comfortable. Must be something about being virtuous and expecting everybody around to be the same. God, what a parade of disappointments life must be to Steven Grant Rogers.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says again, and Steve props an eye open at him. “For what I said. Before. When I was still… in the hospital.”

Steve contracts into normal upright sitting posture, all the ease gone out of him. It’s no wonder. Bucky said some pretty awful things. Things like _You’re too fucking late,_ and, _Barnes has been dead for decades,_ and, _You didn’t save him then and you can’t save him now._ He’s been thinking about it lately. About Steve.

Steve’s put up with a lot from him. And Bucky nearly landed Steve in it last week. If the agent watching him hadn’t been Natasha, things might have gone bad. What he did was selfish and careless and he wishes he hadn't done it. He wishes he wasn't the kind of man who was careless of a guy that used to be his best pal. The kind of man he used to be, before the fall. The one who used to look after Steve. The one who was a Commando. The one who took so damn long to break.

Bucky sighs. “It was real crass of me to say those things. I shouldn’t have said them.”

“All of it was true, more or less,” Steve says quietly. He’s folded his hands together now, and he’s looking at them.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “but you didn’t have to know about it.”

Steve’s silent for a bit. Bucky watches the pigeons strut around and rubs at the place where his new arm joins up with the scarred and mangled flesh on his shoulder. It hurts. Well, it doesn’t, not really, because there’s nothing wrong with that arm, it’s just fine. But sometimes he _thinks_ it hurts because he landed on it and broke the bones to pieces and pulp and the doctors say his brain remembers that better than anything else. He's not surprised. He remembers looking at it. He remembers thinking that his arm looked like something that wasn’t an arm, didn’t know what exactly, maybe like a cat run over by a car. His body, not looking like a part of him at all. And after that it never was.

Then he says, “You don’t have to pay me back, you know that right? Back before, I did the stuff I did because we were friends. But there’s a lot of water gone under that bridge. I don’t want you thinking you have to put up with this because of back then.”

Steve looks over at him. Bucky avoids his eyes.

“I’m a risk to you,” he goes on, “I know they told you but maybe you need to hear it from me. They're gonna call me to answer for the things I did, and it'll be ugly. But before that, who knows what's gonna happen? If I turn bad, or if you change your mind about this roommate thing,” Bucky nods at him, “I want you to call it, okay? We haven't been friends for a long time. You don't owe me, and I won't have you thinking you do.”

Steve shakes his head. “Buck, you’re real jerk sometimes, you know that right?”

He laughs a little. It’s not funny, but he feels like it’s supposed to be. “Yeah, Rogers, I know.”

His arm arches. He rubs at the prosthetic and his shoulder. He wonders if they’d let him do without it, the arm. He never asked for it anyway. Doesn't even know if he wants it. 

“You okay?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods. “Can we go back? To the apartment? My arm hurts.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Let’s go.”

 

***

 

“I want to get a tattoo,” he tells Taji the day after. He’d been thinking about it all night and woke up knowing what and where and came round as soon as he could.

Taji laughs. “Okay, yeah.” He waits and Bucky doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything. Taji shrugs. “You… have something in mind?”

Bucky nods.

“Okay, well, book in with somebody and…” he pauses, looking at Bucky for a long moment. “That piercing-on-demand, that was a one-off because I had a cancellation and I wanted to show one of the newbies how it’s done. You gotta book in for the tattoo.”

“How long is the wait?”

“Depends. What are you getting?”

Bucky swallows. “You know the Howling Commandos insignia?”

Taji shrugs.

“I want it on my chest. Left side. Just black ink. You can tattoo over scars, right?”

“Yeah,” Taji says cautiously. “Look, you’re a nice enough guy but you seem kind of impulsive. Maybe you should think about this. The piercing you can take out, the tattoo, no.”

Bucky hesitates. He could try to explain, but the truth is _insane_. He wants the Howling Commandos insignia because before this, before what happened to him, that’s what he was. He was one of them. And Zola changed his body, and Hydra changed his body _and_ his brain, and he's got scars and a high-end prosthetic to remind him of that, but he’s got nothing to show for all that time with the Commandos. All those miserable nights huddled around the fire, and all those stupid plans, and all those endless trudging days. Nothing. And the thing is, he doesn’t want to wait. He doesn’t think he _can_ wait. He doesn’t know how long they’re going to leave him with Steve and he doesn’t know how much later there’s actually going to be.

“I…” Bucky tries to think of something to say, something that will sound reasonable.

But Taji’s looking at him thoughtfully. “Is this is about that guy who died, Morita or whatever his name was?” he asks quietly. “I heard about that on the news. Did you know him or something?”

Bucky feels sick. He didn’t know any of the Commandos were still alive. And now he’s found out Jim Morita was alive, only to learn that he’s dead. He doesn’t know what to say.

“Shit,” Taji says quietly. “I’m sorry, man. He family?”

“Yeah,” Bucky answers. “He… yeah he was.” Brothers, in a way.

Taji sighs. “Look, I’ll talk to Sunny. She’s new and she hasn’t got a lot of clients, but she does good work. She might be able to get you in today, if you can wait.”

“I can wait,” Bucky says. He does.

 

When Bucky gets back to the apartment, it’s late and he’s hungry.

“You didn’t tell me Jim Morita was still alive,” he says. “Not that it matters now, I guess.”

It’s almost the first thing he says when he comes in the door. Steve’s sitting with a cup of coffee and a book, the dishes from his dinner in the sink. He puts both the book and coffee down on the counter and looks at Bucky.

“He was in a bad way,” Steve says. “I didn’t figure you’d want to see him like that. And he wouldn’t have known you. He didn’t even know his own kids when I saw him last.”

It’s hard to feel angry, just tired and lost. Bucky sits down at the counter across from Steve.

“I never figured it’d be time that got Jim Morita,” he says.

Steve laughs. He’s wearing that wry smile, the one he only ever shows Bucky. “Yeah, no kidding. Still, you’d think if you make it to your nineties that means you get to go peacefully, you know?”

Bucky frowns. “What’s that mean?” he asks.

Steve sits back. “You didn’t hear,” he says softly, nodding as he does. “At least, you didn’t hear all of it.”

“So what’s the rest?”

“There was a fire at the old folks home. Started in his room.”

Bucky’s blood goes cold.

“He was an old man,” Bucky whispers. He grips his shoulder where the new tattoo is stinging and bruised-feeling. A memory of Jim, of all the boys and all the stupid shit they did together. Family. Before the fall. “He was an old man, no threat to anybody.”

“The Commandos were a symbol,” Steve says. “Still are.” His eyes narrow at Bucky. “You okay?”

“Somebody killed Jim Morita in a fire and you’re asking-?”

“I mean your arm. It is okay?”

Bucky looks at his own hand as if he’s surprised to find it there. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah I just. Jim. He would have been ninety if he was a day and didn’t know his own kids any more? Harmless.”    


“Yeah,” Steve says. His eyes are soft and sad. “Sorry I didn’t tell you. I… guess I was afraid you’d be cut up about it.”

“I’m not,” Bucky tells him, even though he is, he is. Nothing’s hit him like this, not for a long time, maybe decades.

This is grief, raw and ugly, a mix of horror and of sorrow. A part of him is glad to feel it because Jim Morita was a firecracker, a wise-ass, a trickster. He should have gone out doing something stupid in the war, or got to go quiet in his sleep, not like _that_ , not Jim. But if he didn’t die the way he deserved, at least he should be mourned right. Sometimes Bucky doesn’t feel much, but at least he feels this. He’s glad he can.

“Okay,” Bucky admits, “I’m a little cut up. But I should be. And so should you.”

“I am.”

“So what’s being done about it?”

“Sam Wilson, the Falcon, he’s got connections to the Commandos too. He’s… looking into it. Trying to track down who gave the order. I’m going to help bring that person in.”

Bucky nods. He looks up. “What can I do?”

“You’re not clear for fieldwork, Buck.”

He looks at Steve and lets Steve stare back at him. Bucky knows him better than anyone else in the world, and there’s one thing he’s sure of: If anybody took this personally, it’ll have been Steve Rogers. Whatever him and this Falcon guy are doing, there’s no way it’s all going to be above board.

Steve smiles faintly.

“I’ll tell him you’re in.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky stresses Steve out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a teeny update. I've got a bigger one planned for Sunday.  
> Also, you guys are lovely, the comments are wonderful and they're making my day. Come hang out on [tumblr](http://tamthewriter.tumblr.com/) if you like!

There is comfort in shared unease. Steve carries his phone with him everywhere now, to bed, to the bathroom, and out, which he used to do anyway. Bucky knows that he is free to go, but he stays in the apartment anyway because he doesn’t want to miss the call when it comes. A day passes. And then another.  


He is not good at waiting. He learned many things when he was the Winter Soldier, but not how to be without orders. They managed that in other ways. With cryo, with training, with drugs. He was never, from the time he first put on a uniform, without something to do with his time, without a goal or a mission or an objective. He never learned how to be idle. He is bad at it.

He paces, checks doors and windows, slides hands on objects feeling for indications of something, indents to upraisings, anything that might suggest a bug. He picks the healing edges of his tattoo, chews the nails of his flesh hand down, and then bites at the nail beds until they bleed. He scratches his scars, arms, shoulders, legs, face, anywhere the skin is uneven. He does it idly, more because his hands need something to do than because he wants to draw blood. But he draws blood all the same.

On the third day, Steve comes out of his bedroom and puts a gun into Bucky’s hand. It’s a rifle, an M40, fitted for sniping. Old, but in good shape, except that the wooden stock is greasy with fingerprints and oil, the scope is fuzzy with dust and the oil has turned sticky with time.

“It needs some love,” Steve says, maybe a little apologetically.  


Bucky's grateful, not just for the trust that's embodied in that gesture, but for something to do. “I’ll look after it,” Bucky promises. "Good as new."  


Steve disappears and then returns again, with a bag of tools, some rags, a little container of oil, and Bucky makes space on the coffee table. Then he opens the tool bag, sets out what he needs, and begins to take the gun apart. It centres him, this work, a kind of meditation. It calms him. Time spools out and he stops waiting, just dismantles the gun piece by piece and wipes the clotted oil and the dust away. As he does, he begins to wonder, and then to test himself, and by the time he's got it back together, he's sure he's right. He sits back on his heels and looks at it, the burnished metal, the gun stock the colour of honey. Steve comes over to have a look, and smiles.

“It's a nice gun," Bucky says. "You should take better care of your weapons.”

Steve nods. “Yeah. I've been meaning to get to that. Thanks for looking after it.”

"Her," Bucky says, looking up at Steve from where he sits. "I used to call her Betty."

Steve looks down at the floor, like he's ashamed of himself.

Bucky looks back at the gun, passes a hand over the stock, a little more fond than he expected to be. He feels like he's seeing an old friend. "How did you ever find her?"

"Luck. Accident. Captain America fans tirelessly searching World War Two memorabilia websites." He shrugs. "I shoulda looked after it better but…" he shrugs again. "After I bought it I couldn't ever bring myself to clean it. Just put it in the gun safe and tried not to think about it. Sorry. I guess that was no way to treat your girl."

Bucky’s about to say something when the phone rings. Steve goes to the counter where he left it and Bucky can see from Steve’s expression it’s the call they’ve been waiting for. He gets to his feet before Steve even speaks, starts disassembling the rifle. “Okay," Steve said, tone crisp and businesslike. "Thanks. On the roof in ten.” Steve sets down his phone and Bucky looks over at him.

“You know I'm bringing her, right?" Bucky says. "You've got ammunition, don't you?"  


“We’re only going to capture whoever put out that order, Buck. And _maybe_ soften him up a bit before we turn him over. This is going to be quiet and quick. No killing.”

“Always a good idea to have a way out in an emergency," Bucky says. "Ammunition? You got some or do I gotta go get some?"

Steve sighs. "I do have some. It's old Soviet ammunition. Stinks."

"Ammonia," Bucky says. He knows. Steve nods.

"But it works just fine."

Bucky nods. He gets to his feet. "I guess that's what's in the safe by your bed?"

"Yeah," Steve gives him a calculating kind of look. "Did you figure out the code yet?"

He's not surprised Steve knows he's been snooping around, the same way Steve's not surprised he snoops. "Not yet," Bucky says. "I tried everybody's birthdays, the old postal code, your new postal code, your service number, my service number... I'm stumped."

"It is your service number," Steve says, looking a little smug about it. "Backwards. And starting with a zero."

"Getting wily in your old age," Bucky murmurs. "I'll remember that, you know."

Steve smirks.

 

 

While Bucky digs out the ammunition, Steve puts on his blues and slings the shield on his back, and then pulls out the second suit. "Hey," he says, tossing it on the bed, "get dressed." So Bucky does. The suit's not tailored for him, it's sun-faded everywhere but the stitching, but it's sturdy, and it's armored, and he's glad to have it.

Bucky helps himself to a good knife from the collection in the gun safe, and then they get Betty and the ammo into Steve’s old gym bag, and go up to the roof. It’s breezy and cool, in spite of the mid-summer sun glaring down. Falcon is already there, perched on the ledge and waiting for them. Bucky’s seen him before, and if memory serves, Falcon was a complication in his last, messy, unfinished shitshow of a mission.

“This is Sam Wilson, Falcon,” Steve says. “Falcon this is-”

“Yeah, I remember,” Falcon says. He shakes Steve’s hand and then offers his hand to Bucky. “Barnes, right?” he asks.

Bucky hesitates. Only Steve really calls him Barnes. Well, Steve and Natasha.

“Hey,” Sam says. “You ripped my wing off and kicked me off a multi-story building. You don’t shake my hand, I’m going to start thinking you don’t like me.”

Bucky shakes the offered hand. “Yeah. Bucky Barnes. Either is fine. Sorry about last time,” he adds. “Steve’ll tell you I’m a jerk. He’d be right.”

Falcon grins. Then he looks at Steve. “He’s not clear for combat, is he?”

“Nope. And don't bother trying to talk him out of it, I already tried.”

“Okay then.”

Sam shrugs and a pair of mechanical wings unfold in stages. They're jointed like spider legs, but when they open they're feathered. He remembers them. He remembers how he had to grip and rend to tear the wing off. They look flimsy, but they're made of sturdy stuff.

Steve frowns at the wings. “Are you going to be able to carry both of us?” he asks. He's looking at the ground, four floors below. Bucky’s not too keen on the idea of falling again either. Sam, though, doesn't seem bothered.  


“Stark fancied my old wings up a bit,” he says. He sounds pretty certain of himself. “They’re rated to carry me and two and Captain Americas now, so we’re good.”

Sam gestures. He an arm around Steve, and then signals to Bucky, like this is going to be a group hug and Bucky’s a reluctant participant. “Grab on tight,” he says.

Bucky steps up to the ledge. He grabs Sam’s arm and shoulder and shares a crazed grin with Steve. Sam steps forward, off the ledge, and then they’re hurtling toward the ground and then they’re up. The wings carry them, up and over the tar-paper rooftops and the little hidden gardens of the city.

Bucky grins. His heart is full in his chest and he feels like even if he let go of Sam things would be fine. That’d be the chemicals. He knows all about chemicals. Adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine, oxytocin. In the early days, when they were still breaking him, when they couldn’t make him do something, they made him _want_ to do something. A lot of needles, a lot of drugs. Drugs to make him want to please them, to make him good at learning, to make the pain stop. That one, in particular.

He did a lot of terrible, vicious things for that one.  


But his head's his own now; nobody's injected him with anything for upwards of two weeks and he's starting to like it. It’s been a long time since he felt this way and he hadn’t done something awful. It’s been a long time since he grinned this much; his face aches from all the smiling. This feels stupid and crazy. This feels like something the Commandos would have done. Exactly the kind of stunt Jim Morita would have liked.

“Where are we going?” Steve asks. He has to holler a bit, over the wind.

“Not much further, just Bed-Stuy,” Sam calls back. Then he points. “There. That’s it. That red brick building with the metal shed on the top. There’s a little biddy baby Hydra field office out of the top floor there. Real good people work there. The kind that kill old heroes in their beds.”

Bucky looks at the building. They’re starting to lose height, starting to cut the air in long, slow circles, like a bird hunting. Then Sam banks hard and swears and Bucky has to shift his grip. The new arm is more delicate, way lighter but not as strong as the old one. He’s been told this one has some kind of auto-repair mechanism that means less time sitting with computers plugged into his fingers, but that’s not helpful right now.

“Hey, Sam, could you not do that again?" he asks.   


"Yeah, I prefer my underpants clean too," Sam answers. “I'm too heavy on that side." He nods at Steve. "What did you have for breakfast, Cap? Concrete?”

“When I’m stressed I work out,” Steve says. He doesn’t appear to be having any trouble holding on. Bucky frowns at him, and Sam grunts and hauls hard on that wing to get some lift.

“Steve, are you feeling _particularly_ stressed these days?”

Steve looks over at Bucky. “This clown’s my roommate, Sam. You got no idea.”

They’re right over the building now and about twenty feet up, circling in wide, slow arcs. Bucky looks at Steve. “You think I’m stressing you out now? Just wait till we start working.” He grins, and lets go.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where things go rather badly for our trio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished early! This is because I have no life!
> 
> Also: Sorry for playing so fast and loose with, well, everything. I get carried away.

He rolls on his left side when he lands, it’s habit, and he uses the momentum to travel across the tarpaper roof. It scrapes his ear and his hip a bit, and he comes up with tarry sand all over him. Steve thumps to the ground in a crouch and gets to his feet. Falcon circles one more time, and the wind’s not right but Bucky’s pretty sure he can hear him cursing.

He nods at Steve. “I like your friend,” he says. “And the transport.”

“Yeah, it’s a lot faster if you don’t have to wait in traffic.”

Bucky takes a look around. It’s a quiet spot. There's a bit of graffiti and a lot of litter pushed up in corners and dead-ends. Not a lot of cars in the street, not a lot of people either. It looks almost like most of the buildings are sitting empty.

Across the alley nearest them, there’s an apartment building, a big old fashioned one, sort of more suited to Bucky's memories of New York than how New York looks now. Big, square, brick. Tall windows with brickwork eyebrows. There's a guy standing, looking out one of the windows. He's a blond guy with a bandage over the bridge of his nose and two little bandages holding his eyebrow together in lieu of stitches. He frowns at them. Steve waves. He would.

The guy in the window shrugs and goes back to scratching the old dog that’s snuggled up next to him and drinking sipping from the mug in his hand. He doesn't look like he's in a hurry to do anything, either call the cops or alert Hydra or whoever's running this little operation. Bucky glances at Steve.

"Don't worry about it," Steve says and Bucky nods. He shrugs the bag with Betty off his shoulder and looks around.

“Looks like we're going into a small space,” he says.

“Yeah," Steve agrees. "I don’t know why but I was expecting something… a little more serious.”

Bucky nods. “There’s no point in bringing her where we can’t fire her,” he says. He looks around. There’s a little snowdrift of garbage in the corner of the building's roof, so Bucky goes over and heaps trash up and then slides the gym bag under it. “Sorry, doll,” he tells the gun as he arranges the trash to hide the bag, “I’ll make it up to you.”

Sam lands lightly, and Bucky comes back to Steve while Sam’s wings are folding up. “Ready?” Sam asks.

All three of them start toward the door. Steve’s got the longest stride so he gets there first. He drops his hand onto the handle and grins at Bucky. Bucky grins back. This is so stupid, but he loves it.

“Shall I hold the door for you, Sergeant?” Steve says.

“Oh no, after you Captain.”

“Age before beauty.”

“Really, Steve? Trying it on with that mug?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh you guys are just killing me,” he says, and shoulders between them and hauls open the door.

 

 

There are, or were, two people standing guard at the landing just below. Sam takes care of the them before Bucky's even got through the door. He's polite about it, just leaves them unconscious. Then he forces the door and leads the way in. Steve follows, and Bucky goes last. When he steps over the two inert guards he looks down. His mouth goes dry. Memory crashes over him like a wave, memory and _rage_. If it had been him, he’d have slit them open and left them not quite dead on the filthy lino, breathing in a their own blood. It’s probably better that Sam went first.

He feels Steve looking at him and doesn't want Steve to know what he was thinking about. He looks up and Steve meets his eyes. He doesn’t ask, but Bucky nods, _I’m okay._ His neck works like a rusted hinge and the movement is a jerk. Steve nods back.

He follows Steve into the room beyond. It’s a little sort of vestibule, no windows, only the door they came through and the door at the far end of the hall. It occurs to Bucky, sort of nowhere, that if he wanted to recover a lost asset and maybe acquire some new tools in the process, this is exactly how he’d do it. An outrage that would be impossible to ignore, a poorly defended operation. It’s too good to be true. The temptation to bypass channels and just go and deal personally just a little too much to pass up. They’ve been stupid. This is a trap.

“Shit,” he says, and that’s when the door opposite bursts open and all three of them look. Something is silhouetted in there, a big man, holding something Bucky can't see the details of. Something booms like thunder. Something hits him like a car and throws him backward, left arm crackling blue sparks, twitching and then dead, useless. He hauls himself to his feet. Sam's moving, catching a blow and giving one back to a woman in military-surplus gear and a t-shirt. Steve… Steve was closer to the man and the gun. He's on the ground, twisting, groaning, heaving himself up to his knees. Bucky starts toward him but something hits him on the back of the head, and his head goes sideways hard. The room lurches and he's not sure where he is for an instant, then the second blow hits him and that's it.

 

 

He comes back to himself, aware that the back of his head is hot and it hurts as if it’s bleeding, and his arm is crackling and smoking and it stinks like ozone. "Up, Barnes," somebody says in an urgent kind of tone. "Get up." It's Sam.

His left arm is useless, but his right arm is fine. His head, on the other hand. Well. The world's still lurching in place like the second hand on a stuck clock. He gets to his knees but he can't get to his feet. Someone grabs him by the collar and the belt and for a second he's suspended by the harness of the suit, and he has a vivid recollection of 1933 and a speakeasy where he drank too much and puked on the floor and the gorilla at the door did this exact thing to him, but this time he's not going face first into a heap of garbage, he’s going through a door and into a stairwell. He goes ass-over-tea-kettle down a set of stairs and lands face-up so he can see Sam shoving the two unconscious guards like a bulwark against the closed door. Then Sam turns and jumps down the stairs to him.

"Sorry man," Sam whispers. "Had to be done."

Bucky'd answer but he can't. His head is pounding. Whatever he got hit with, it's scrambled his brain, and the electronics in his arm.

The next thing he knows, Sam's kicking a door open and half-carrying Bucky into a vacant office. He eases him down on the warped tile floor and Bucky sighs and slumps back. Foam ceiling, brown stains of water damage. The air is thick and musty and sunlight falls in bands from greasy windows. Sam closes the door and locks it, then stands listening for a minute before he comes back to Bucky, crouching down.

“Hey Barnes, you with me?” 

He's got a wound on his upper arm. It’s bleeding between his fingers. He needs a bandage on it. Bucky pushes himself upright. They didn't bring a first aid kit. This was supposed to be a quick, quiet thing. He groans. Feels like someone's taking an ice-pick to his brain. _That's what you get for being stupid, Barnes_ , he tells himself.

“You-” he starts, and a gush of blood spills out of his mouth when he says it. He must have bitten his tongue when he went down the stairs, though he doesn’t remember doing it. “It’s okay,” he says to Sam, who's recoiled at the sight. "Tongue's all. You're bleeding."

"Yeah. How's your head?"

"Okay. Enhancements," Bucky says. He manages a smile. The pain is ebbing fast, and his head's clearing already. When he gestures at Sam, the fingers of his left hand twitch. Self-repairing. Nice. "C'mere. I'll bandage that."

Sam blows out his cheeks and comes close enough for Bucky to take a look at his arm. "Christ. Thought that guy was going to take your damn head off."

“Felt like he was trying," Bucky agrees. He laughs. "Guess we’re pretty stupid, falling for a trap like that.” He tears Sam’s sleeve apart and then ties the fabric around the wound. “Ugly, but it’ll have to do,” Bucky says. “Speaking of which, where’s Steve?”

Sam’s still looking at him, looking at his eyes. “You were in and out for a couple minutes. You seeing straight now?”

“It’s fine.” Maybe Sam didn’t hear him, so he asks again. “Where’s Steve?”

“Because if you are seeing straight, I need you to get on your feet. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He knows Sam heard him ask about Steve. He knows Sam’s not answering. He knows what that means. Horror like ice, like a nightmare. Veins full of drugs. Liquid in his lungs. The machines, the table, the _chair_.    


“Oh god,” he whispers.

Sam gives him a flat look. “This is the point where we admit we fucked up and we call in the big guns.”

It’ll take too long. SHIELD will scramble but by the time they do Hydra, or whoever these jokers are, will have Steve underground, or out of the country, beaten, drugged up, bloody. Torn apart. Frightened. Mocked. Humiliated. Broken, begging. He knows what they do when they capture a high-value target. He knows because he sometimes brought them in. He knows what happens after. That can’t happen to Steve.

Sam shakes his head. “No, Barnes, no. You are _concussed_. You’re in no shape to go after him.”

“The hell I’m not,” Bucky snarls. He lurches upright and hangs on to the wall till the world stops spinning and jumping. It doesn’t take long. Whatever Zola did to him, whatever happened when Hydra was experimenting on him, they wanted to make an unstoppable killing machine. Well they did. And since his mind has been his own he’s wanted to make them regret it, he just never had the opportunity. “The _hell_ I’m not,” he says again.

“Barnes-” Sam starts, and whatever he was going to say never gets out, because there’s that thundering boom again, this time in the hallway and a _whump_ that rattles the windows and Bucky’s guts and shakes the dust shimmering into the air. His arm makes a hissing noise.

“What the hell _is_ that?” Bucky whispers. Sam’s staring at the door, mouth open just a fraction. He’s never seen Sam afraid, but he’s seeing it now. “You fought that upstairs. What is it?”

“Some kind of gun," he says quietly, and Bucky understands that it's not fear that's colouring Sam's voice, it's numbness. Sam's seen this before, done this before, and the outcome wasn't good.

 _Boom._ The door blows to pieces, the windows shatter, the air turns opaque with dust and plaster and splinters and even if there was enough to breathe he couldn’t. Then the heat hits him, a wave, searing. Alarms are going off. Bells ringing, car alarms whooping. There’s a guy, a big guy, blond, standing in the skeleton of the doorway, holding a thing that looks like a cross between a cannon and a mini gun.

Bucky’s knows he has to move before the air clears, before the guy deploys that thing again, because the concussion of the gun, cannon, whatever it is, was bad last time, in a big room, and in here it’ll be like a stick of dynamite going off in a pond, and it won't have to hit them to turn them to jelly. He knows. He moves. Not going for the gun, going for the guy’s feet. He takes the guy around the knees and heaves up, lifting him enough to make him overbalance and go backward.

They land on the hallway carpet in a tangle of arms and legs and the huge fucking gun is right against his belly for an instant and then Bucky twists, gets his right forearm against the unprotected throat and shoves down hard, hard, as hard as he can, until he hears the crunch of cartilage and small bones and the man stops thrashing.

He gets to his feet, shaking. He never used to shake after a mission, but he’s shaking now. Shaking and staring at the gun, aware his ears are still ringing, aware Sam is shaking too, hair and skin covered in plaster dust. He realizes Sam’s staring at the gun-cannon-thing like it's a bomb about to blow.

“You’ve seen that in action before.”

“My wingman, Riley,” Sam says. “Something knocked him out of the sky. I never saw it. I just saw him. Falling. But I’ll never forget what it sounded like.”

Bucky nods. This he understands. He takes the weapon from the dead man’s hands. It’s heavy, stupidly heavy. Maybe a prototype. It’d be almost useless as an infantry weapon, but it’d be ideal for short-term installation. He considers. His arm is making little whirring sounds. It’s supposed to self-repair. He hasn’t tested it, he doesn’t know it the way he knew his old one. But he likes Sam, and he needs Sam, and Sam’s in a bad way right now. Besides, he sure as hell doesn't want something that can fry his arm lying around where just anybody can grab it.  


So he grips the gun and yanks on it. The arm strains, then something in it hums and his hand tightens and suddenly the plastic shrieks and shatters under his hand. He grabs the rear support and yanks that off too. Then part of the housing.

Sam comes over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. He smiles wryly. “Okay, I think it’s dead now." He looks at Bucky. "Thanks."

Bucky nods. “You ready?” he asks. Sam nods.

“Yeah.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam offers career advice.

 

The air’s not clearing.

“You smell that?” Sam asks.

Bucky sniffs and under the smells of mould and dust and his own sweat, he can smell the acrid scent of smoke. That weapon must have fried something more than Bucky’s arm, maybe it cooked the building’s electrical too. Somewhere not too distant, an alarm starts to ring. “Fire,” he says. "Great."

Sam frowns. “We’d better step this up.”

Bucky nods. If this was all a trap to lure in Steve, the people responsible will have come prepared to manage him. Restraints, chemicals, whatever it takes to keep him quiet till they can put him somewhere more permanent. When he dragged high-value targets back for Hydra, it was always a two-part process; the chair to wipe away the self and the will to fight, to prolong the shock of capture, and then the injections to keep them that way. If this was a trap for Captain America, there's a chair here somewhere.

There are two guards at the door one floor up, conveniently not dead, thanks to Sam. “Come on,” he says. He shoves past Sam and up the set of stairs to where the guards are lying, tangled together, and starting to move.

He grabs the woman by her shirt and drags her into a sitting position, then squats down and slaps her face a couple times, lightly, till she cringes back. _Whaaat?_ she groans like a kid. She might even be a kid. She’s still got baby fat around her face and pimples on her nose. She opens her eyes and when she see him, she gasps.

“You want to live?” he asks.

She nods.

“Where’s the chair?”

“Basement,” she whispers.

He considers. It shouldn’t matter, not _now_ , but it does. He swallows. He asks. “You ever see them put anybody in it?”

“Once.”

Bucky’s hand is almost big enough to completely encircle her throat, the pulse flutters under his thumb. He could tighten his grip till it stopped. It would be so easy. She closes her eyes.

“Barmes,” Sam says beside him, voice soft. “She’s a kid.”

“She knows. She made a _choice._ ”

“You ever regret anything you did?”

Bucky freezes. He remembers watching after he brought high-value targets in. He remembers knowing if there was someone in the chair they couldn't put him in it too. In a time when he didn't feel anything, not really, he remembers the sensation of relief. Relief that this time the person lying there screaming wasn't him. He can hear his breath shaking as it comes and goes between his clenched teeth.

"Shut up," he whispers.  


“If you choose to kill her today, are you going to regret that tomorrow?”

Bucky glares. The answer is, that depends. It depends on if he’s looking at Steve’s stupid face tomorrow, or if he’s looking at a newspaper headline. But… he knows a little something about regret. He glares at the girl, but her eyes are closed and she's not seeing it. So he shakes her hard til she opens her eyes.

“You picked the wrong fucking side,” he says, and lets her go. She sobs in a breath, and then another and he realizes that he didn't know he was choking her. Too angry. Not in control. He's got to keep it together. He breathes a couple deep breaths to steady him. Chair, basement, Steve. He looks at Sam. "Let's go."

But Sam's taken the belt from the second guard and he's tying the girl’s arms behind her back. Then he nods at Bucky. “Get the other one," he says. "Come on.”

Bucky stares. Sam’s getting to the girl to her feet and getting her up the stairs, up to the roof.

“Are you fucking-”

“Barnes. This building is on fire _._ ”

They're in a hurry but Bucky’s not going to argue with the guy who’s got the wings and the way out. And besides, the kind of people who kill with fire are not the kind of people he wants to be.

He pulls the unconscious guard up and looks at him. He's a kid too; best guess is sixteen. Sometimes Bucky feels like he's a million years old but he remembers being sixteen. He remembers standing watch for Will Coney while Coney ran his poker games and bare-knuckle bouts. Mostly he just whistled if the cops were coming, sometimes Bucky threw a couple punches for his pay. It was stupid and dangerous and eventually Steve talked him out of it. Well, that's what Bucky let him think. The problem was honest work didn't pay enough to live on.

He frowns at the kid, slumped there in a t-shirt and camouflage pants. People keep telling him the world has changed, but maybe it hasn't, not really. He hauls the kid over his shoulder, and follows Sam up to the rooftop.

Up there the daylight is blinding but when his eyes adjust he can tell see a few tell-tale signs that someone else has been on the rooftop. Well, he and Steve each dropped from a height and they'd both weigh in as heavyweights, so they probably made a hell of a noise when they landed. Small wonder if a conscientious building super comes up and has a look around after two loud thumps on the roof like that.

He glances over where he hid Betty, and the heap of garbage doesn’t look like he left it. Smaller, scattered. He doesn't need to go look to know somebody’s taken the gun. He spends a second hoping it was a cautious building super and not a fucking sniper. Steve’d never let him hear the end of that.

He doesn't exactly throw the unconscious guard onto the roof, but he's not exactly gentle about it either. Then he starts back toward the stairs. Sam, though, is talking to the girl as he sets her down on the tar paper roof, and Bucky can hear what he's saying.

“Listen, what he said about picking the wrong side, he’s right." He's using that _I’m not mad, but I sure am disappointed_ sort of voice. Bucky knows he’s trying to flip her, trying to put an ally at their back, but the fact is they don’t have time for this. Steve's missing, and there’s a chair in the basement, the building’s on fire. It's one thing to save these two kids, it's another to give them a talk about making good decisions while Steve is in enemy hands.

“Falcon,” he snaps, “hurry the fuck up.” 

Sam ignores him. “SHIELD is always looking for field agents,” he tells the girl. “You could be on the side of the angels if you wanted.”

Bucky looks over. The girl's nodding, swallowing, her eyes are glassy with tears.

“You tell them Falcon sent you and they’ll give you a chance.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, tears spilling. “I’m r-really sorry. I just… I needed work.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Times are hard.”

No, they don't have time to be sympathetic. “ _Hey_ ,” Bucky shouts, “You with me or am I doing this alone?”

Sam looks up, then at the girl again. “Fire escape’s that way," he says. "If you can’t get down you can signal to the other building to get help.” He nods at her and starts toward Bucky. “You think about what I said."

Well, Bucky’s got to hand it to him, he knows how to turn the dial just right. She’s tucked her chin down, shoulders shaking, sobbing now.

“She crying?” Sam asks in an undertone as they duck into the stairwell again.

“Yeah.” His heart is pounding out of his chest and he feels sick. He doesn't see how Sam can look so calm, like he knows exactly what he's doing and everything's on schedule. That should probably piss him off, but actually pushes back the raw panic a bit. He grins. "She's bawling like a baby."

“Good." 

He and Sam go down the stairs at a run. They pass the sign for _Fifth Floor_ moving fast, as fast as they can.

"Ten bucks says she drops into a SHIELD office next week,” Sam says as they run.

"A bet? _Now?_ "

Sam grins.

"Okay, sure. I'm in," Bucky says, taking the stairs two and three at a time. “I mean, if I don’t have a date with a firing squad next week.”

“Yeah, we don’t do that kind of thing any more."

“Sorry if I’m not up on twenty-first century military justice,” Bucky snaps. Okay, so he's still feeling a little panicked. _Fourth Floor_. “If I'm not being Court-marshaled.”  


“Look, you don’t want to bet you can just say."

Bucky laughs. He wants to say _Fuck you, Sam_ because this conversation is stupid and pointless and Steve needs them and they wasted so much time rescuing those two stupid guards and they're… _Third Floor_.

"Firing squad," Sam scoffs. Stairs three at a time. Fire alarms blasting.

 _Second Floor_.

“Listen," Sam says, "did you really think they’d have let you run around New York if they were going to put you in front of a firing squad?”

“They’ve got tails on me.”

“Do they? Damn. What a bang up job they’ve been doing.”

“And it’s Captain America.”

 _Ground Floor_.

“Sure, yeah, it’s Cap. But you’re still wrong. SHIELD will do this cold-war style…" he stops, which is fine because Bucky has no idea what he's talking about. "Yeah, never mind."

 _Basement_.

"No firing squad, I promise. Ask me to explain later.”

Something comes unscrewed in Bucky's chest and between that and the panic about Steve he has to fight hard not to go over the edge. _Focus, Barnes._ He tilts his head to listen at the door. No sound inside. “Sure. Later," he says. He's grinning in spite of himself. He's starting to lose the fight against the hysteria. "Assuming we’re alive.”

Sam scowls at him. “Anybody ever tell you how annoying optimists are, Barnes?”

"I know," Bucky says, he's started giggling, he can't help it, "But we gotta rescue him anyway."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things are upsetting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Important note***
> 
> Guys, I know I’m super flippant and, hell, this is fiction, but I think it’s important to be serious for five seconds. This chapter is pretty damn dark. It's bloody and it's violent and there's some graphic stuff about torture and its aftereffects here. I hope I’ve done it with respect, but… it’s not a very comfortable read. 
> 
> If that sort of content isn’t for you, you can safely skip this chapter and you'll still be able to follow the story.

They reach the bottom of the stairs and Bucky pushes through the door at the bottom. He goes through with his fists clenched, but there’s nobody there to fight. It’s a big, empty room, dimly lit by alternating banks of cheap fluorescent lights.

Something about the place terrifies him. Maybe it’s just the frantic ringing of the fire alarms, maybe it’s just adrenaline. He stands at the threshold, looking, but there’s no threat, not that he can see. Next to him, Sam stands and looks around.

“You hear something?” he asks softly.

Bucky shakes his head.

“What it is then?”

He doesn’t know. Nothing. There’s nothing here. It’s a basement. Pillars and beams and exposed piping and tags hanging from valves and twisting cables. Concrete and bad lights. For a second he thinks about the girl, _I’m sorry_ , and wonders if she lied to him, and then he realizes why the hairs on his neck are standing up, why his stomach has bottomed out. Under the smells of damp concrete and dirt he can detect the odour of leather and of ozone. The chair.

“It’s here,” he whispers. “The chair’s down here.”

“That door?” Sam asks, indicating with his chin a door that says _EXIT_ not too far away from where they’re standing. It's the only possible place. To be able to smell the leather they’d have to be close, but it's not here.

When Bucky moves it’s like breaking free of ice. He and Sam go side by side to the door. Bucky feels like he’s eaten a handful of stones. He swallows a few times and sees Sam looking at him.

“This chair thing,” Sam says very softly, “You going to be okay when you see it?”

Bucky smiles, he knows the expression is cockeyed and twisted. “Probably not,” he admits. Sam nods. He puts his hand on the door handle.

“Ready?” he asks. Bucky nods.

The door’s unlocked. They just walk in.

 

How many in there? About half a dozen. It’s not a very big room, it probably used to be a storage space. There are two doors, this one and the one on the far side with the word _EXIT_ painted on it in red. A drain in the floor. A chair. Steve.

He’s stripped to the waist, bloody-mouthed, a stunned expression in his glazed eyes. The _thing_ over his head, the _thing_ close to his mouth. A handful of people watching, heads half turned, hips cocked, smiles, smirks. Steve in the chair.

Arms.

Strapped.

Down.

And red, red where the strapping covers flesh. He’s been struggling.

Bucky stares for a second. Relief. _It's not_ _me_. And then a savage loathing, for himself, that thing, those _people_. He moves.

He kills the first person before anyone even knows they’re there. Grabs him by the back of his head and twists his neck and drops him like a doll on the floor and steps over him, reaching for the next one, a woman wearing glasses, mouth parted in surprise, her blood sprays the two standing closest to her. Those two are uniformed in black, professional toughs, but one of them recoils, slipping on the blood, and Bucky lets him go, the second comes toward Bucky, arm out to grab him.

Bucky ducks, drives the knife up into the guy’s armpit. That drops him, but he takes the knife down with him. By now it matters less. People are scattering, slipping on the blood, doors flung open, Sam’s taken the second guy down and drops him onto the concrete where he lies still. They’re done. Now it’s only Steve. And he should… he should go. He should go and he should move his feet and run to Steve and tear the straps off his arms but he would rather stare at the carnage than raise his head and look, look over there, over _there_. He's so glad it's not him. He can’t look.

“Barnes, you okay?” Sam asks.

“Get him out of that,” Bucky whispers. He can’t do it himself. He can’t make himself look, he can’t make himself go. Go see. Steve is there. “Get him out, _get him out!”_

Sam starts moving. He doesn’t see how, or where.

He can’t look. He stares at the dead, arms out-flung, mouths gaping, fluids, blood, urine, all swirling together toward the drain in the floor. The drain near the chair. Where Steve is.

Steve, who knew way too well what it was to be helpless in your own body, who should never have had to feel that way again.

Steve, who never used to ask for anything, who should never have been made to beg for mercy.  


Steve, who never would have doubted that Bucky would look out for him, but must doubt it now.

Bucky knows. He should have been faster. He knows how this goes. Run. Check the alleys. Steve’s disappeared. He’s in trouble. The fucking mouth on that guy. He’s _always_ in some kind of god damned trouble. Stupid kid. Find him. Save him. Save him. Mission failed.

He hears metal noises, the sounds of the straps coming loose, clattering down, then human noises. He hears Sam say, “Okay, man?”

“Yeah. Okay. Good to see you though, real good.”

Alive. Mouth slurring the words. Alive. Sometimes being alive is worse. The thing over Steve’s head. The thing near Steve’s mouth. Bucky knows what those things do. Steve shouldn’t have to know too. Failed. Failed. Fucking failed. Useless.

He feels sick. He goes into the corner of the room, puts his hands on the cool concrete wall. Fire alarms ringing all around. He wonders, briefly, how the place can possibly be on fire if the concrete is so cool under his hands.

He kneels. It comes naturally. Doesn't even think about it, just does. They used to have him do this, kneel in front of the wall and wait. When he’d done. Something. Something bad, real bad. Kneel, and wait.

Something bad. Real bad. He can’t think. He can’t think of anything worse than this. Anything worse than failing and Steve in the chair and the way he felt when he saw it. Relieved. Glad. When punishment comes, when it comes, when it comes it’s going to be…

Shocks. Blinding. Ears ringing. Screaming screaming screaming until they crank the electricity up so high he can’t make noises any more and just jackknifes on the floor in silence til they stop.

He waits, contracting in on himself, holding his stomach and folding up so hard his head is almost between his knees and tears are leaking from his eyes. Something so bad. Something so bad there can’t be enough punishment for it. Failed mission. Glad. Relieved. Broken. Useless. Garbage. It's going to hurt. It's going to hurt so much. And it should.

There's a noise, rising at the end, like a question. It’s Steve’s voice, soft, just behind him. People don't talk to him, except to tell him his mission, to order him to report. Those words aren't for him. He stares at the place where the floor and the wall join up. More words. Then,

 _Barnes_ _!_

It jolts him. Sam's voice. He raises his head and it's like he’s coming out of water. Sam's talking to him. “I said: Get on your damn feet.”

It’s a lifeline, it’s a leash, it’s _orders_. He can do orders. He can do orders without feeling or thinking. Orders are safe. Don't think, obey. He lurches upright.

"Listen," Sam's voice is crisp and sharp. "What you did upstairs to that gun, you remember?"

He nods.

"Do the same thing to that fucking chair."

He moves because it's orders, only because it's orders. He moves slow at first. Slow and with his head turned so he doesn't have to see, doesn't have to see that he's walking toward the chair and there's nobody in it. But when he gets close his head turns as if it's not his to command, and he looks at the chair. He sees where the head pieces collect on thin little arms. He reaches for them. He's never willingly touched the chair before and a part of him twists with disgust at the feeling of the pads under his hands, but these are orders. His fingers close over the head piece and close, and close and keep closing and it bends and shrieks and shatters.

And then it's easy. It's made to be disassembled and moved, and there are joins and seams that he can get to now, when he's not strapped down. It comes apart easily, so easily. In his head it was an edifice, a featureless concrete wall, a mountain. But under his hands it's nothing. He had no idea how easy it would be to tear the whole fucking thing to pieces.

"Good," Sam says and he stops. There's a weird sawing sound in the room, coming and going under the frantic ringing of the distant fire alarm bells. He swallows the saliva that's pooled in his mouth and hears the sawing stop. His breathing. He tries to breathe slow and deep and it's not easy to do.

"Good," Sam says again. "It's dead. Now get over here and help me hold this guy up." Then, more quietly, he adds, "You weigh a fucking ton, Cap."

"Tell me about it," Steve answers softly.

Bucky looks at them. They’re close to him, both Steve and Sam. Steve is leaning on Sam but he’s upright. He looks dazed but -- Bucky looks at his eyes -- he’s not hurt, not hurt _like that_. He wants to say something, do something, to check.

“I thought you were shorter,” he croaks. Sign.

Steve manages a lopsided smile on that bruised mouth. “I thought you were dead,” he answers. Countersign.

Not broken. Not unmade. Okay. Failed, but not a catastrophe. He failed. He's sorry. He's never been so damn sorry for anything in his life.

“Did they use that on you?” he asks very quietly. Steve’s smile is kind.

“No. Just gave me a shot of something.”

Bucky inhales and exhales. Steve glances at the wreckage of the chair.

"They didn't know you guys were coming. But I did."  


It’s a kindness, Bucky knows it and he doesn’t care, because it’s what Steve would do, which means it’s still Steve in there. Not wiped, not changed, not lost. Not like Bucky. Not like the man he was who's gone forever and all that's left are fragments. Still whole. Okay. Okay.

Steve disentangles himself and stands on his own legs and looks at Bucky.

Bucky would give anything to be able to touch Steve right now. To be able to cross the barrier between them and wrap arms around him and hold onto him, and feel for himself the bones that aren’t broken and the muscles that aren’t torn. He wants to tell him he's not a good man, and tell him he's sorry, and beg for Steve to forgive him. But he can't move, and in the end it’s Steve who comes over to him. He steps in and settles arms around Bucky, as if Bucky’s the one who’s been damaged.

“I’m okay Buck,” Steve says.

“Okay,” Bucky says, returning the hug in kind, testing ribs, arms, shoulders with the pressure. No problems, no wincing. “Okay, good. Jesus Christ.” He hears the way his voice breaks and knows he has to cover it, so he collars Steve with his arm and shakes him a bit. "Jesus Christ, Rogers. I take one nap and you fall into enemy hands.”

Steve submits to the way Bucky tugs him around. Then he straightens up and there’s silence filled by the frantic ringing of alarms and the muffled whoop of sirens from outside. Steve raises his head and looks around, like he’s only just heard the noise. “So, those alarms,” he says, “Is that your idea of stealth, Buck?”

“You got a problem with it complain to Sam,” Bucky answers. The numbness in his head is gone now, and he's got the emotion under control. “He’s the one who blew up the fourth floor _and_ set the building on fire.”

Steve laughs. “That sounds about right.” He grins at Sam. Sam shakes his head and rolls his eyes. "So, seeing as there's a fire and everything, we should get moving, shouldn't we?"

Sam nods and starts toward the door marked _Exit_.

"Before you open that," Steve says, "The goons with the guns came through that way. And I got the impression they weren't the only ones behind that door. They were talking a little, when they thought I was too out of it to listen. The old buildings on this street are all connected through the basements. Somebody's been buying up the buildings and clearing the tenants out to put in an operation. These guys aren't Hydra, but they're connected to them, and they're not small time. I think we're probably going to have to fight our way out."

Sam looks at Bucky and Bucky’s pretty sure that he’s wearing the same expression. Three of them, Steve drugged and slow, Bucky shaken, his arm not quite right yet, and Sam exhausted. They need medical. They need water. They need eight hours of sleep, a couple good meals, and probably an arsenal. But the building on top of them is on fire, and there’s only one way out.

“You know what?” Sam asks suddenly. “Morita would have thought this was _hilarious_.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we discover that blonds don't actually have more fun.

Bucky does a quick search of the dead. It's grim work, but they're going to need weapons. He finds an automatic that he passes over to Sam, and a big, heavy Desert Eagle for himself. Then, with Steve between them, and the fire alarms blasting, and the air getting bitter and warm, they don’t even bother to check if the door they came through is hot yet, they just head for the far door and hope for the best.

Considering the way things have been going, the escape actually starts out pretty well. They go through the door at the far side of the room, and then through the long, dark hall beyond. It’s not much more than a tunnel, lit by those caged lights more common to mechanic’s shops than to high-tech operations. They’re strung end to end with extension cords, but they do the trick.

By the time they get to the door at the end of the hall, Steve’s moving under his own power again, walking slow, but walking. “What did they give you?” Bucky asks softly.

“Huh?”

“The injection.” He knows about some of the different drugs and what they do, how long they take to work, how it feels to have them running in your veins. "Did they say what it was?"

“No." He smiles at Bucky, warm and kind and Bucky would like to feel like he deserves it. "Don't worry about it. I doesn’t seem to be doing anything except tiring me out a bit. Maybe they didn’t know the serum metabolizes everything double-quick.”

Bucky frowns. He doubts it. Sam’s frowning too.

At the end of the hall, there’s a steel door set into the wall. Sam reaches out and tests the door handle and shakes his head. “Locked,” he says. “Naturally.”

Bucky nods. “My turn,” he says. It’s easy, now that he’s learned how to use his arm. He pulls the handle off the door and it sort of sags open. They push through the door and into another basement.

It's almost the twin of the one they just left, but this one’s got a big furnace in the corner near a door, another door almost dead ahead, and a long wooden table in the middle. The table, a spindly-legged folding thing, is cluttered with tools like hammers and cordless drills and there’s a table saw at one end and at the other there are six guys in track suits holding a blond man down so his face is getting smushed against the table.

Bucky's pretty sure it's the guy with the dog, the one Steve waved at when they first landed on the roof. If it is, his day went bad in a hurry. His bandaged nose is bleeding a steady drip-drip-drip off the table and onto the floor, and one of the track suit guys has a saw poised over the fingers of his right hand. The track suit guys, the blond guy, all of them, are perfectly still, and staring at the three of them.

“Okay,” the blond guy says, “this looks bad.”

Everybody looks at the blond guy and it's the instant Bucky needs. He’s ducked out from under Steve’s arm, pulled the Desert Eagle from his belt, and shot one of the thugs in the kidneys before anybody seems to notice. The guy goes rigid and then topples over. Then it's chaos. Someone tries to stuff a knife into his ear, but he sees it coming. He grabs the hand, twists, breaks the small bones and the guy shrieks and drops the knife and scrambles away. He looks up for the next target but by then it’s over. The rest are down or have scattered.

Steve and Sam are helping the blond guy up. Both seem to know who he is. He’s… worse for wear. Bloody nose, an eye that’s half-closed and going to be black tomorrow, but he’s not really hurt. Bucky tucks the gun into the suit’s utility belt. Then he goes over to Steve, standing by the blond guy.

“Clint,” Steve says, “this is… uh…” he looks at Bucky and licks his lips. “Well, this is awkward.”

Clint’s eyes go wide and he stops rubbing at the side of his head. “No kidding?” he says, looking at Bucky. “You cleared already?”

Bucky smiles. “No,” he says.

Clint’s eyes go from Bucky’s face to Steve’s and then to Sam’s. He frowns in that, _I’m impressed_ kind of way. “Okay, that’s a surprise.”

Steve shrugs. He recovers a bow from the ground and passes it to Clint.

"Thanks," Clint says. He takes it and reaches under the table to retrieve a mostly-empty quiver. There are a couple arrows still inside, with little pieces of masking tape on some of them. Bucky looks closer. One says _Putty_ , one says _Net,_ and another says _Boom_. He looks at Clint again. Clint shrugs.

“Everybody needs a hobby,” he says. Then he pauses, and turns his head like a bird listening. “What’s that noise?”

“Smoke alarms. Sam set the building next door on fire,” Bucky says. He sees Steve’s mouth twist in a suppressed grin. Sam sighs and shrugs. Clint scowls.

“Well as long as it doesn’t burn down mine. I just bought it.”

Steve goggles at him. “Where did you get the money to buy a whole building?” 

“It’s complicated,” Clint says, a little sharp. “Look, could we go? Because if I can hear the fire alarms going, then the fire’s close and I’d kind of like to be alive this time tomorrow. I’ve got a dog that depends on me. What are you guys doing here anyway? I mean, not that I’m not glad you turned up when you did or anything, it’s just… Did I miss a call? Are we supposed to be Avenging something?”

Sam shakes his head. “No and it’s a long story,” he says.

“How long?”

“Two beers at least. Has to do with that hit on Morita.”

Clint nods.

Sam folds his arms over his chest. “What about you?”

“Tracksuit Mafia,” Clint grunts, rubbing at his head again. “Two beers. Maybe three. Like I said, it’s complicated. So… Wait. Morita?”

“He was a Commando,” Bucky says.

“Oh.” Clint shrugs again and Bucky guesses he has no idea what that means. Clint scratches his chin. “Morita. Yeah. One of these guys said that name. Well, not these guys,” he gestures at the bodies all around, “I mean the big bald guy with the BO, he’s upstairs.” He grins. “I bet he’s exactly who you’re looking for.”

Steve nods. He’s not smiling any more. “I bet you’re right,” he says quietly. His face is grim, and… Bucky looks a little closer. There’s bruising around one eye. It was there when they got him out of the chair, but it went away in the hall. Now it’s back. Something’s wrong. Whatever they gave Steve is working.

“Steve,” he says softly. “You okay?”

Steve blinks and smiles, boyish, and glances away as he does. “Yeah, of course.”

Liar. Always such a bad fucking liar. Bucky moves close. He’s not going to call him out, not in front of the others. But if Steve goes down, he needs to be close enough to protect him.

“Well,” Clint says, gesturing to the nearest door, “if you’re looking for the guy, that’s the way-”

He stops. He stops because there’s a man at the door, a very large bald man, in a track suit made of some kind of shiny material, and with him comes the aroma of too much working out and not enough attention to hygiene. He’s holding a sawed-off shotgun in his hands. And behind him there are, oh, easily three or four more just just as big, and carrying an assortment of weapons.

“I told you get lost, bro,” the big guy says, looking at Clint, “I told you _not selling,_ bro. You pick fight. You bring _friends._ I have friends.” He grins. He’s missing half the teeth on one side of his mouth. “You in trouble now, bro.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things continue to spiral downward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to a friend (who shall remain anonymous) who is in the Navy and who assisted with the creation of Bucky's colourful language. Sailors, man. Sailors.

Steve starts forward, finger upraised and pointing at the biggest guy. Bucky grabs his arm. If this guy with the shotgun gets excited and fires a shot, it'll blow out everyone's ears and probably knock their balance out and then they really will be fucked.

"Can it," he snaps. But he knows it's useless because Steve’s got a _thing_ about bullies, and he knows this is going to go south in a hurry. Sure enough, Steve jerks his arm out of Bucky's grip and starts up again.

"Listen son-"

Bucky hears a shot. Not the colossal boom of a shotgun discharging in a small concrete space but something smaller, quieter, discreet, outside the room. A silenced pistol. One of the tracksuit guys closest to the hall falls down, screaming, and the rest all turn. 

“Other door!” Sam yells and Bucky feels a surge of fondness for the guy. He grabs Steve around the waist and hauls. Steve goes _Ouf_ into his shoulder and then flops down and Bucky has half a moment to think he's _got_ to stop stressing Steve out because Steve weighs a metric fucking ton, then Sam's through the door and Clint's waving him and Steve through, and following after. Clint drags it closed. It's metal, but it's not going to be enough. They start running.

It’s a corridor like the one that connected this building to the last one, but this has actually been finished. The walls are gyp-rocked and painted, the floor is lino tile, and there are doors, fire doors, Bucky guesses, in the middle. They pause there, Sam takes a look through, and then they slip through. There's a door at the far end of the hall, standing propped open so warm summer air comes drifting in, along with the smell of dust and exhaust, and the lights are off in this part of the hall, but it's fine, the light reflecting off the white walls and the floor is enough to see everything, even the little sprinklers in the ceiling.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to walk toward the light,” Clint whispers.

Sam laughs. “You got a better plan?”

“No, not really.”

Bucky can hear something. A low, soft rumble, like a distant engine. He shoulders past Steve and the others and pussyfoots forward. He likes this. Dark, quiet, careful movement, senses straining. Even before the fall, he was the man in the shadows, the surprise second act when someone was beating up a skinny asthmatic with a big mouth, the sniper on the hill. He’s always been the dirty part of getting things done. Even before they changed him. It never bothered him then and it doesn’t bother him now.

He crouches, slips to the edge of the light. He can smell the smells of outside riding on a hot breeze. Smoke and sun-baked August concrete and dead grass, gasoline and exhaust. That humming is the sound of a big engine running at a low idle. He edges forward just a little more.

It’s so bright outside it’s blinding. Seems weird that after so much action and darkness it should still be daytime, but it is.

It takes a while for a his eyes to adjust. Then he can make out a courtyard surrounded by sightless windows, some of them broken, some of them boarded up. Trash lying around in corners and tangled in thorny vines. Men and women in military-surplus pants and dirty shirts, automatic weapons resting at hips and across their backs. Most of them are just standing around in groups of two or three, talking, maybe waiting for orders. Some of them are moving purposefully across the dusty ground. In and out of buildings. Shift change on watch duty, maybe. Pretty shitty watch with nobody guarding this door.

He takes a good look around. Near to him there’s a trio of motorbikes, all identical, and near that, there’s a man and a woman. The woman is still, frowning, and she holds a nice little rifle against her with the sort of relaxed calm that comes from long use. The man wears a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’s unarmed, and shaking his head. Bucky sees the man’s lips move. _Well how far could they have possibly gotten?_ And he’s pretty sure he knows who he’s talking about.

He looks up. No obvious watch nests, and if there are rooftop snipers he can't see them. The engine noise is coming from up there too. A helicopter, blades slowing down. Somebody just arrived in style, and it’s not too far a stretch to imagine it’s Dress Shirt Man. Well, since the building blew up and started on fire and they’ve retrieved Steve he’s not really surprised someone… maybe higher up has come to deal with the situation. Whatever that situation is, exactly.

He looks up at the helicopter and then the sky. The sky is heavy with smoke, streaked yellow-grey around the orange globe of the sun, turning the day a sulky and dull, and shading the yard. If it stays like that, they’re going to have a hard time taking off. They probably didn’t reckon on Steve, Sam, _and_ Bucky all together, and maybe they’re feeling a little over their heads. He grins. It’s nice to know someone else is having a bad day.

He turns and creeps back and, about twenty feet in, he hears a little noise. A sort of sigh. He whirls in time to see the light in the doorway diminish as somebody swings the heavy door shut. He throws himself against it but it’s too late. Something _clunks_ inside the door, like a bank safe closing and the sound makes his stomach lurch. Something hisses above him in the dark and all at once the air in the little tunnel changes. It cools, from the top down, as if a mist is falling. And it tastes a little sweet.

“Oh shit!” Clint shouts, somewhere in the darkness. “Guys, cover… cover your…” and a thump.

Bucky doesn’t even get his sleeve up to his face before he goes down too.

 

***

 

Bucky wakes.

Dreaming, he’s been dreaming. God, what a dream. Fuck, what a dream. A dream like those dreams where everything goes wrong and it’s so damn frustrating and you just can’t grab on to anything and everything’s slipping out from under your fingers.

Dreaming about the future. Like there’s some kind of young Steve Rogers in the future. Like he didn’t die after Bucky fell. Like that newspaper headline they showed him was wrong. A good dream. He closes his eyes again. He knows it’s impossible to go back into a dream once you’ve left it, but he tries anyway.

Steve, if Steve had lived, would probably be dead by now anyway. He’d have married Peggy. More like Peggy would have married him, because Steve was, well, Steve. They’d have had a family. They’d have had grandkids probably. They’d…

They don’t usually let him remember things like this, but those memories are all there.

And they don’t usually put him in a cell. Not any more. They did when they were breaking him, _before_. Not now.

He sits up. Head aches. He’s wearing loose cotton pants, nothing else, and he’s shackled to the wall. Big shackles, not the police-issue type. He looks at his shoulder on the left side. Howling Commandos, there in black ink. Not a dream. Probably. He has a look down, at what’s in his pants. And _that’s_ a modern affectation, that’s for sure.

So that crazy dream wasn’t really a dream. Which means things actually did go that badly. Which means all four of them really did get captured by this goddamned group, whoever the hell they are. Which means they actually are, all of them, in real fucking trouble.

It's been a long time since he was in a cell. Even when SHIELD brought him in they didn't hold him in a tank like this, they took him right to a secure infirmary. Heavy doors, thick bars on the windows, sure, but a bed, and a toilet and a sink, paperback books and a rug on the floor. Not this. Empty, concrete, shackles.

The last time he was in a cell he was still James Barnes, and he was still more human than monster. He was still defiant, still brave. He didn't know how terrible it was going to get. He didn't know that he'd be pissing himself and begging them to stop until he gave up on that too. He didn't know how low he would sink, and he didn't know that humans could do those things to other humans. If someone had told him, he would have said they were lying, that nobody would do shit like that. But that was before.

He wants to forget all that he knows about what humans will do to one another when they think they'll never have to answer for it. He wants to be the man he was the last time he was in a cell. The man who snarled and spat and hollered and cursed until the guards grew tired of it and came to beat the fight out of him. At least it was a response, and he knew that even if he was nothing more than an irritant to them he was still bothering them, still a stone in the shoe, still had some power over them. He wants to be that man again.

The chain gives him enough freedom of movement that he can heave himself to his feet, but not enough to get to the door. He looks anyway. From here he can see it’s riveted, there’s a flap at the bottom for food, and a tiny window at the top, plugged with a thick plastic, threaded with wire. He looks at the shackles. They're solid but they're not tight. He flexes his left hand, and he wonders if he tears off his thumb to get out of the shackles, could the arm repair itself? He wonders if the arm will shut down pain reception if it reaches too extreme a degree. He wonders if he'll scream and puke and go into shock. It's not going to kill him, he knows that for certain. It might be worth it, to get an extra three feet of reach. He could goad them till they come in to shut him up. He could surprise the jailer, maybe get his weapon, maybe get keys.

"Hey!" he shouts, working his left hand in the shackle. "You don't think the cell is enough? You really thought I needed shackles too? Didja piss your pants a bit when you were bringing me in?"

His voice rings in the silence.

"I tell you what, you come tell me what this is about and when I get outta here I won't shake you up and down till your nuts drop, and then feed em to ya."

He keeps his eye on the little window in the door and twists his arm. That shackle is definitely too tight, even tucking the thumb in as tight as it will go isn't going to be enough. If he's getting out of the shackles, he's losing the thumb when he does it. He might end up tearing off the whole hand. The same moment he realizes that, he realizes he's afraid of the pain.

"Because I tell ya…" 

Steve's sick, and he's missing. And pain is temporary. And nothing's ever going to hurt like his arm did. Not even this.

"Because I tell ya, I need being stuck in here like I need a second asshole. You know what I'm saying? Course you don't. Dumb fuckers. Don't worry, when I get out, I'll show you what I mean."

A pair of blue eyes appear at the window of the door and vanish again.  


Metal scratches on metal and he starts pulling, pulling his arm through so the prosthetic peels against the dull edge of the shackle. Then the metal begins to bite, the fibers of the prosthetic strain. The pain is breathtaking and he knows he's going to have to turn it off to be able to do this. So he reaches for the part of him that came after the last time he was in a cell. The part he keeps locked away. The cold part of him. The part they made. The one that obeys and never questions. The one that doesn't stop because of pain.

The door swings open and Bucky turns.

It's Clint, standing there, bow slung over his shoulder. Sam's with him, the automatic cradled against his belly. Bucky stares. He lets go of the part of him that is the Soldier, reaches for the man he is now. It takes him a minute to feel anything, but it comes, first a trickle and then a flood. He breathes out, then laughs softly, once, and when he does the other two smile twin relieved smiles.

"Okay," Sam says and Bucky realizes neither of them came into the cell, just stood at the door. Probably smart of them. "Well you get an A+ on the crazy eyes there Barnes. That's the look that haunts my nightmares."

He smiles. "Sorry. Didn't expect to see friends."

"No kidding," Clint says. "You've got a hell of mouth on you."

“Old trick."

"Piss them off till they shut you up?" Clint grins. "Yeah, I know that one."

"How did you get out?”

Clint shrugs and shows Bucky a couple pieces of bent metal in his hand.

“I grew up in a circus,” he says. "Picked up all kinds of stuff." He sees the shackles and his eyebrows go up. “Wow. They were serious about keeping you here.”

“He's got a reputation,” Sam says. He looks at Bucky. "You hurt?"

"No. Steve?"

"Not sure yet. They put me and Clint together. I figured they'd put you and Cap together."

Bucky shakes his head. " _Fuck_ ," he whispers.

"He won't be far," Clint says. He nods at the shackles. “Let me see those.” Bucky raises his wrists. Clint looks at the shackles and back at him. “Did you seriously try pulling your hand off?"

"Of course."

"Jesus." He looks at Sam and Sam nods.

"Told you. Can you get him out?"

"Yeah," Clint says. "Two seconds. Everybody pays for the big fancy shackles, but nobody bothers with a better lock."

 

It only takes a minute and then he's free and out of the cell, him and Sam and Clint. He looks around. White painted walls, scuffed and dented. And judging from the dents it looks to him like the walls are standard building materials, gyp-rock and two-by-fours. The cells look like they're made of concrete slabs, but that's the only study thing. Even the doors at either end of the room are standard building doors with panic bars. This was never a prison, this was probably storage that was altered to hold Steve. Maybe Steve and Sam. Certainly not the four of them.

Sam goes to the nearest door and looks out.

"That goes to the courtyard. Two guards. And I found Steve," he says, coming back.

“Where?" Bucky asks.

Sam shrugs. “In trouble. Where else?”

Clint frowns. Then he brightens. "Oh yeah. Before I forget, somebody left this lying around.” He passes Bucky the Desert Eagle from before.

Bucky checks it over, and grins at Sam. "Want to share the guards?" he asks.

Sam smiles. "I'll take left, you take right. Then we rush for Steve." Bucky nods.

"I'll give you a distraction," Clint says. He takes the _Boom_ arrow out of the quiver and knocks it to the bow. “Guards first, then I fire, this lands, we go after Steve."

Bucky and Sam nod. They go to the door and Bucky sees what Sam saw: Two guards, guns, a knot of people in the middle of the courtyard. Steve on his knees in the dirt and Mr Dress Shirt standing over him, head tipped to the side like Steve's something strange he's found on the ground. There's a collection of gun-toting problems standing around, four near Mr Dress Shirt and another two at a far door, a couple scattered around. He doesn't think they'd risk killing Steve, not with all this effort to capture him, but even with that knowledge, he doesn't like the odds. Plus, there's something not right about Steve. He can't tell what it is from here, but he doesn't have to be a medic to know the way he's holding his body means something hurts. He thinks about the way the bruise on his eye disappeared and then came back, and how Steve lied about being okay, how he didn't fight Bucky when Bucky picked him up. He doesn't care about the odds.

He looks at Sam and Sam nods. They go through the door together, fast. The guards are surprised, so it's easy to do it quietly. Clint steps between them, bow drawn, and fires up high. Bucky sees the arrow arch up like a comet and then come down like a stone right onto the helicopter on the roof. And then, _boom._

It wasn't a terrible plan, as plans go. They should have known it was never going to work.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein a villain is encountered.

Bucky picks off one of the gunmen before the guy recovers from the shock of the explosion, and another as he turns to face the new threat. Sam takes out another two, and then Bucky’s falling to his knees in the dirt beside Steve, saying his name, grabbing him by the shoulder. His skin is fever hot, dry as paper. When he looks at Bucky he looks right through him, then blinks.

“Buck?” he asks.

“You gotta get up Steve,” he whispers, grabbing Steve by the arms and starting to pull him.

Then there’s the _pow_ of a gunshot somewhere up high, and the bullet buries itself in the ground between them and where Sam and Clint are standing. People stop moving. Ash from the explosion and the fire next door falls like snow. The still air is filled with sirens and with flashing lights from the fire next door. Smoke billows overhead.

They’re surrounded. Four men with automatic weapons pointed at them, a sniper on the roof giving them a warning. Bucky sees Clint’s eyes, taking in the problem on the ground and then looking for a problem in the sky. Bucky looks too. The rooftops have a lot of cover.

“Down,” someone says. Bucky turns. It’s the guy he saw earlier, Mr Dress Shirt, the one he first saw talking to the woman with the rifle. Speaking of snipers. He looks around again and doesn’t see her. There has to be a nest somewhere.

“I said, down,” the man says. Someone comes up behind Bucky, shoves him to his knees and takes the gun from his hand. The others too. Beside him, Steve sags. His breathing is wrong, laboured, a little fast. Bucky looks at him. He’s shivering, like he's got scarlet fever or pneumonia again. He looks back at the guy giving the orders. Mid-thirties. Glasses. Dress shirt rolled up to the elbows. Pale little squirt. Like he spends too much time indoors. Like he spends too much time hunched over a table cutting things apart.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Alan Sayers,” the man says, as if this is a cocktail party. “Don’t worry, you’ve never heard of me.”

“Hydra?” Clint asks.

Sayers looks over at him and scowls and doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks back at Bucky. “You’re Bucky Barnes, aren’t you? The _other_ super soldier.”

“You can’t do it, you know,” Bucky says.

Sayers looks at him. Bland, calm.

“I’m what happens when you try. The chair and the injections. You don’t make a Captain America. You just make monsters.”

The man smiles.

“Yes, that’s what I thought, also known as the Winter Soldier,” he says, as if Bucky hadn’t spoken. “There’s no record of those body modifications in your file, and your arm has been changed, but they did say SHIELD did some work on you. Sounds to me like you might have enjoyed at least some of it.”

He makes a decision not to rise to that, though he’d dearly love to smash all the teeth out of this Sayers guy’s head.

“I wonder what your old keepers would pay to have you back?” It’s a prod. See if he begs. See if he blanches. Bucky keeps himself breathing and calm. “I could give you the same thing I gave him, you know. Maybe you’d like it more than he does.”

He’s coming closer. Stupid, too confident. He’s getting into range. “You hear what I said?” Bucky asks, getting ready. He’s kneeling. It’s easy for him to get to his feet when he’s on his knees. “You can’t duplicate the effect of Erskine’s formula. Steve's a one off.”

“You misunderstand,” Sayers tells him. “I’m not duplicating it. I’m undoing it. Always wondered what it would be like the take the super out of a superhero.”

Now he gets it. The way Steve’s breathing, Bucky’s heard it before. He understands now what’s going on.

Steve closes his eyes. “So… You killed Morita… So you could do this?” he asks. He’s panting, it breaks up his words. “Why didn’t you… just stick me with a needle… on the street?”

“I killed Morita because there’s a billion dollar bounty for anyone who can deliver Steven Grant Rogers to Hydra alive, and I could use a billion dollars. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming to collect me yourself, and I had a little something I wanted to test out anyway. Two birds, as they say.” He smiles a little in Sam and Clint's direction. Then he looks back at Steve. “That shot takes about an hour to really get to work. You'll know when it does. Your bones are going to start shrinking and that, that,” he smiles widely, “that’s going to be agony.”

Then he straightens up and looks at Bucky. “I didn’t expect this to be a buy-one-get-one-free event,” he says. “But I like surprises. I might even bring you along when I take him.”

Bucky grins at him. “Try it.”

“Oh, that’s no challenge. All I have to do leave with him and you’ll come running.”

Bucky shuts his mouth. The creep’s not wrong.

“Now, Captain,” Sayers says, turning again to Steve. “Why don’t you go ahead and do the honours, hmm? I only intended to take one of you, I can make room for two, but these other two,” he nods at Clint and Sam. “They have to go. Why don’t you pick who goes first?”

Clint groans like somebody just told a bad joke. “Ugh. Me,” he says. “Pick me, Steve.”

Heads turn. Everybody looks at Clint. He’s looking up at the smoke-stained sky.

“I’m begging you, man. We’re friends. Me first. I want to be dead before he gets to the “You know we have a lot in common, you and I” part.”

Steve laughs weakly. Bucky glances at him. He’s sweating, lips whitened, the smiles is quick and thin and gone.

Someone walks to Clint and butts him in the face with the stock of a gun. Clint goes back with a yelp, and they drag him up to his knees again.

“Captain?” Sayers asks. He comes in close and Bucky coils himself. Then hands clamp down on his shoulders, and someone puts the barrel of a gun right against the back of his head. Sayers smirks at him. “Please. You think I don’t know what you are?” Bucky says nothing and Sayers turns back to Steve. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Steve says nothing, but his breath is coming shallow, more ragged, faster.

“Like acid, eating away your bones. It’s not, of course, but that’s how it feels. Don’t worry,” he adds softly. “Soon I’ll put you in the chair and soon you’ll forget all about it. You’ll be so grateful. You’ll ask me to put you in the chair. You’ll beg for it.”

Steve makes a noise, small, between clenched teeth. His arms go around his midsection. He doubles up a little tighter.

Sayers leans down, close to Steve and unafraid. “I can make it stop, you know. Easy-peasy. All you have to do is pick which one gets the bullet first, left or right. Left? Or right?”

Bucky knows this game. He knows cruelty. He knows what it is to suffer and be tempted. He knows how desperately you can want the pain to stop, and how it feels after, when the pain’s gone but there’s blood on your hands.

“Fight, Steve,” Bucky says softly. “Fight.”

“Quiet,” Sayers says mildly. He looks back at Steve. “You see I’m curious about a number of things, Captain. The serum amplified certain qualities about you. Your shoulders, but not the size of your feet, for example. It fixed your health problems, but did not stop you from aging. Well what about your temperament? Did it amplify your goodness and not your coarser nature? As you get weaker, will you become cruel? Will you hate those who failed you? You were such a sickly boy. You must have been so angry.”

“You don’t know a thing about him,” Bucky snarls.

Sayers turns to him. “Don’t I?”

“No, you don’t.” The gun barrel knocks against the back of his head an he shuts his mouth.

Sayers straightens up, takes a step back from Steve and looks at Bucky again. “Go on,” he says.

“The serum amplifies everything. They both did. They both worked perfectly. _We’re_ the only difference.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there was always something wrong with me,” Bucky answers. The lying, the secrets. The surprise second act, the sniper on the hill, his darkness. “They didn’t make me into the Winter Soldier; it’s what I always was. Same goes for Steve. If you knew anything about him you’d know that. He’s never going to play your game. That’s not the serum, that’s him.”

Sayers steps back again. He frowns and shrugs and then shrugs again.

“Well,” he says. “If that’s the case.” He points at one of the armed men. “You. Shoot those two. Do him first-”

A shot echoes. A second follows, and Sayers ducks and then crumples and the dry, cracked earth is suddenly puddled with blood. They’re not going to get another chance. Bucky jerks free of the hands on his shoulder, he rolls forward, kicks behind him, catches something with his heel and then rolls to his feet.

Another shot, two more. A woman falls from the rooftop into the hard earth, a gunman goes down too. Sam and Clint are on their feet, backs pressed against backs, Sam making use of the automatic and Clint using his bow like a bludgeon. A gunman lining up a shot, sniped in the side of the head. Bucky doesn't have time to wonder. He shoves the business end of a gun away from Steve and breaks the hand and the arm and the shoulder holding it. He drops down beside Steve.

“Hey, hey, look at me. Can you move?”

Bucky can see that he can’t. Steve leans against him, breathing hard.

“It’s not true, Buck,” he whispers. He’s shaking hard and there’s no mistaking it now, Bucky can feel that he’s gotten physically smaller. Bones and muscles contracting. Lungs filling up with fluid. Spine deforming. Agony. “It’s not true. You know that.”

“Button it, Rogers," Bucky whispers.

“They made you… do those things. They tortured you. For years. You didn’t… didn't even know… your own name.”

“Save your fucking breath, Steve."

Steve straightens up, and it looks like it’s a hell of an effort. He braces himself, hands on knees. “Please,” he says.

And Bucky understands. Steve's always been glass inside and Bucky never wanted to be the one to break him. What a parade of disappointment life must be for Steven Grant Rogers. Even your best friend lets you down.

“You know you were always the better man,” he says. "Even before."

Steve's mouth twists. “Bucky, _please_.”

Bucky looks up. The danger’s past. Sam and Clint are tending to a wounded guy. Nobody's paying attention to him. He looks back at Steve. This is going to have to be fast. There are going to be a lot of unhappy people with a number of questions to answer soon. There’s no way he’s going to be allowed to walk away with Steve tonight. More like he’s going to a cell, and just as likely that Steve is too. This might be the last time they see each other for a while.  


“Stevie, there’s something wrong with me. Always has been. Maybe I’m not a monster but I’m not right. I always had things I hid from you, didn’t want you to know about. Before the war. I…” he can’t say it, he’ll die before he says it. Did once. Maybe… Maybe that was the problem. Steve’s face is impossible to look at, open heartbreak, disbelief. “Look. I know fellas aren’t supposed to care about fellas like I care about you. I know it’s wrong. I can’t help it.”

Steve closes his eyes. He leans forward again, rests his head against Bucky’s shoulder. “Oh God,” he whispers and Bucky flutters his hands around Steve’s shoulders, feeling like he shouldn’t touch the skin, and dying to. “Oh Christ, Buck. This is bad."

“I know,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve is revealed to be an inveterate freeloader.

Steve's gone quiet, not talking, not pleading any more, just shivering, jaw clenched. He leans hard against Bucky, and Bucky gives in, and puts his arms around him and they sit like that for a while. He can feel the muscles of Steve's back twitching under his hands. "This is bad, Buck," Steve says again. "Nothing's hurt like this. Not for a long time."

Sam and Clint are coming over. Bucky looks up, grateful for their presence. "Can you call for extraction or something?" he asks.

"Done," Sam says. "They're on their way."

Clint puts his hand on Steve's shoulder. "Hang on Cap," he says.

"Not dying, Barton," Steve growls. 

"But if you were, I'd get your blues, right?" Bucky asks. Steve punches him on the arm. Weak as a kitten, but still full of fight. Relief floods him. Pain is temporary. He smiles down at the back of Steve's head. "Hey, pipe down there, Rogers. You'll hurt yourself."

"Buck… I swear…"

Clint grins. Then he looks at Sam and Bucky. "Who fired that first shot?" he asks. "I didn't see anybody. It sure wasn't me."

Sam shakes his head. Then he straightens up. "Oh," he says. "I think we're about to find out."

Clint looks up, and draws in a sharp breath. Bucky looks too. Natasha, hair pulled back, an M40 slung over her shoulder, coming toward them across the baked earth.

“You?” Clint shouts, starting toward her. “That was you up there? And you couldn’t have started shooting _earlier?!_ ”

She shrugs. “It took me a bit to get into position.”

“Have you been watching the whole time?”

She looks at him steadily. “If by ‘watching’ you mean rescuing two kids from the roof of a burning building, then saving your asses from Russian mobsters, and then taking out a third of your attackers with an antique rifle I had not set up myself, yes. Yes, that's exactly what I've been doing.”

“Oh,” Clint says, a little more softly.

She nods. “Anyway, you guys seemed to be handling it. Mostly.”

Sam stares at her and then starts to laugh. He covers his face with his hands. “Oh yeah,” he says, almost but not quite shouting, “Yeah, we handled it all right. Handled it so well we exploded a building and then set it on fire and then killed a dozen mobsters, almost ended up dead ourselves, and managed to get Steve de-serumed. Good job team. Same again next week?”

“You do this again, I’m going to call it in first thing,” Natasha says. “All damn day getting soot on everything I own.” She shakes her head at Sam and then looks down at Bucky and Steve. Bucky smiles. He’s tired, things are bad, but Natasha is worth smiling for.

“I see you met Betty,” he says.

She flashes a grin. “Thanks for leaving her out where I could get her. You always did know how to treat a girl right.” She looks down. “How’s Steve?”

Steve looks up and pushes himself back from Bucky’s shoulder, bracing hands on knees again. He manages a weak smile. “I'll live,” he says. His voice is small and thin. "I might… hate it for a bit though."

She smiles back at him, and pushes his hair out of his eyes. There’s a tenderness Bucky’s never seen in her face before, like Steve’s her kid brother and he's banged up his knee. “I put in a call when things went crazy. Even from over there you didn't look like you were doing very good. Medical’s on the way. I told them you were down. They'll have something that'll take the edge off.”

Steve nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay thanks.” He lowers his head again, as if the effort of looking up is too much.

“Beer’s on Clint tomorrow,” she says softly. “You're gonna be there, right?”

Steve doesn't answer and at first Bucky thinks that was a hell of a weird thing to ask. Then he thinks about before, the bad times. The promises Steve made him. Wanting something in the future as a way of surviving the present.

“Of course he’s gonna be there,” Bucky says. “Clint's buying and Steve’s a freeloader.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just breathes heavy and ragged and leans against Bucky. Clint and Sam stand silent and watchful, and the ash falls like snow.

“Beer,” Bucky says, “And hamburgers, right Clint?”

Clint nods. “Yeah, we got a barbecue up there.”

“Yeah, so,” Bucky says, looking down at Steve. “You’re going, right?”

“Damn right,” Steve whispers. “Never… missed a free meal… in my life.”

Then the ash starts to swirl and a low humming fills the air. “Here we go,” Sam says quietly and the next thing Bucky knows people in uniforms start dropping from the sky. Then it’s over. Really over. They take Steve off him and he doesn’t even get to say goodbye, not to anybody.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Steve disparages Bucky's aural hygiene.

 

Van; shackles. Car; cuffs, guards, guns. Hospital; restraints.

Body doctors. _Yes, you’ll feel a little pinch. Just a few more tests, Sergeant. Take a deep breath. And another. Yes, verrrry good. Follow the light with your eyes. Look up, look down, good._

Brain doctors. Frowning and clipboards. _Put these shapes together to make that picture. Organize these words into a sentence. Spell your last name. And what’s your birth date? Oh. Uh. Oh, so it is. Yes. Well, okay then. Yes, good, you may go._

Brig. Cold, two guards, staring. Sleep.

Interrogation room. Cold, two guards, staring. Two sheets of paper and a little nub of artist’s charcoal. _Write down what happened._ It takes a while.

Back to the brig. Two guards, guards in the hallway, guards at the door. There’s nobody else in these cells. Just him.

Someone left him a set of SHIELD-issue uniform pants and shirt. Get out of the loose cotton pants, put on the other clothes. Warmer clothes. Somebody slides food under his door. Egg sandwich on a napkin and a styrofoam cup of water. Eat. Drink. Lie on the bed.

Wait.

Think.

Morita would have though it was hilarious. The whole thing, soup to nuts. A god damned disaster. Just the kind he would have got tangled up in. And they did what they set out to do. Maybe not how they wanted, but they made that guy pay for what he did. Maybe Morita would have liked that too.

He’s not sorry. Not about anything. Except maybe not being able to say goodbye.

The cell door opens. Two guards. Guns. “Sergeant Barnes?”

He nods.

“Come with me.”

He goes. Guns drawn. Hallway. Too bad Sam was wrong. He really believed it there for a while.

Elevator. Hallway. Buzzing fluorescent lights. A door with no window in it. That’s where they stop. 

“Don’t I get a cigarette?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t know why he would ask, he doesn't want one. Couldn’t smoke around Steve since it set off his asthma, so he never picked up the habit. Tradition, maybe. The guy looks at him like he doesn’t know what to say.

“You, uh, you can’t smoke in here,” he says at last, and opens the door.

It’s not a concrete yard with a bullet scored wall and a drain at the end. It’s not a hanging shed with a trap door and a noose. It’s a lobby, high-ceilinged and sheathed in dark stone panels. There’s a guard station, metal detectors, glass doors. Bucky catches a glimpse of sunlight outside, low light, the butter yellow and faded blues of morning. People come and go through the doors. People are standing in the middle of the lobby, a knot of them, talking. People he knows. Natasha. Sam and Clint. Steve. Steve’s changed.

He’s lean, kind of like he used to be, but ropy with muscles in a way he could never have managed back when he was sick all the time. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and both look brand new, but the shoes are old. Steve always did have big feet. It was a problem on the dance floor. Steve sees him first, starts toward him. They all come toward him, and they’re smiling.

“Heavy security,” Sam mutters, nodding over Bucky’s shoulder where there are still two guards standing.

Steve looks at the guards behind Bucky and clears his throat. “Thanks,” he says. “We’ll holler if we need anything.” When he turns back to Bucky he gives him a wide-eyed look. “What the hell did you do, Barnes?”

Bucky shakes his head, still stunned by the lobby and Steve and the others, and light outside the doors. Just starting to believe that maybe they’re going to let him go. Go back to the apartment, and the neighbourhood he knows, and Steve. “They've been like this since I got here,” he says. "Piles of security."  


“Uh, guys,” Clint says. He raises his hand and begins ticking points off on his fingers. “Winter Soldier, not cleared for combat, just extracted from combat. Also: Explosion. Fire. Multiple kills. Involved somehow in the capture and de-whatevering of Captain America. Am I missing anything?”

“Campaign of bloody vengeance,” Natasha adds brightly. “That kind of thing always makes powerful people uneasy.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “I thought…” he swallows. The numbness that he’d felt is ebbing and now he’s realizing how afraid he was, how glad he is to see them. He gives Sam a little smile. “I was pretty sure you were wrong for a bit there.”

Sam wrinkles his nose. “When I’m not burning down Bed-Stuy, I work with vets. I know whereof I speak.”

Natasha smiles. “Speaking of work,” she says. She looks at Clint and Sam. “Did you guys finish your paperwork yet?” she asks. Sam smiles but Clint groans.

“Come _on_ ,” he says.

“You don’t have to do it, but if you don’t, you’re not going to get paid.” She shrugs. Then she brightens. “Maybe if there’s money left over Coulson’ll give me a bonus, since I saved all your lives. Changed my mind, Clint. Don’t file.”

Clint props one eye open. “Wait, wait. We’re actually getting _paid_ for what we did?”

“We did take down a burgeoning terrorist cell,” she says. “Kept Captain America and the Winter Soldier out of Hydra hands, and found out who ordered Jim Morita’s murder.”

“ _And_ ran the tracksuit mafia out of that part of the city,” Clint adds, nodding now.

She smiles. “Sounds about right for SHIELD business, doesn’t it?”

Clint grins. “Well,” he says. “Okay. I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“Beers,” Natasha calls after him. “At your place. You promised.”

“Buy a case,” Sam adds.

“Sure, yeah. See you guys at six. No, seven! I gotta clean my place maybe…” Clint disappears through a side door.

Natasha nods at Steve. “I’m taking Sam across town to see about getting his wings fixed. That weird gun fried them. I’ll be back and at my post by ten a.m., okay?”

Steve smiles. “You know, you can take a day off if you want.”

“Car payments,” she says, sighing. “Besides, there's Sergeant Barnes to consider.” She tilts her head. “They're terrified you're going to go Winter Soldier on them. Which,” she shrugs at Bucky, “actually implies there are a few sensible people in SHIELD.”

He smiles. “I’m not that person any more.”

“I know. But they’re not going to believe it till a geek wearing glasses says it for you. Anyway, Sam?”

“Yeah, I… Wait,” Sam says, looking at Natasha, “did you buy Clint’s Challenger?”

“It wasn’t his,” she says. “And I’m driving.”

"Damn." Sam's voice is half admiration, half disappointment.

“Hey,” Bucky says before they can leave. “Sam, about earlier. Yesterday, I guess. You asked me if I’d regret it tomorrow.”

Sam looks at him, blank for a moment, then Bucky sees him remember, and he nods. “Yeah.”

“I would have.” He smiles faintly. “Thanks."

Sam smiles. Then his smile turns into a grin and he leans forward. "You can show your gratitude by ponying up the ten bucks you owe me."

"Really? Already?"

"She helped Natasha out on the roof. Turns out she's a good shot."

"You said SHIELD _office_."

Sam scowls.

"Never bet against Bucky," Steve says quietly. "You'll never win."

"Ten bucks," Sam says again, pointing at him, then he shakes Bucky’s hand and follows Natasha out. Bucky watches them go. Then it’s just him and Steve. He looks at Steve again and shakes his head.

“What?” Steve asks.

“You. This.” He gestures at Steve’s shape. “You went from carrot to a french fry. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

Steve laughs.

“Well, don’t get too used to it. It looks like it's going to be temporary. I grew a quarter inch over night.” He shrugs. “At least my shoes still fit.” He looks down at his shoes and then up at Bucky. “The doctors say you’re fine and you can come home with me, if you want, or stay with SHIELD. It’s up to you.”

Bucky smiles. “They didn’t even give me a pen to write the report,” he says. “And that hallway was full of fucking guards. I get the feeling they’d be happier with me gone.” He considers that, though, and what it means, after what he’s said. “If it’s okay with you, I mean.”

Steve nods. “Of course it is.”

“Look, Steve. I… There’s something I gotta say.” He takes a breath and then remembers that this is a public place. He looks around, but there’s not really anywhere worth going.

“Come on,” Steve says, “I came with Natasha so we’re on foot on the way back; we can talk while we walk.”

Bucky nods and follows him out into the morning light. It’s early, the sidewalks are mostly empty. It's cool and the air still smells clean; there aren’t many cars around yet. They walk in silence for a bit, the two of them, but Steve gets out of breath pretty quick, so Bucky walks a little slower. They don’t talk.

“You gonna make me guess?” Steve asks after a while.

Bucky grimaces at the sidewalk. “I bet you could.”

Step step step. In spite of everything, they still walk in time, like they’re on parade.

Steve sighs. “You wish you didn’t say what you said.”

“Got it in one.”

Step step step.

Bucky sighs. “I shoulda kept my mouth shut. I got no right to put that on you. After everything you’ve done for me. I should never have said that.”

“I’m glad you did, Buck.”

Step step step. He swallows, heart picking up the pace a bit. No. Steve’s not like that. He wouldn’t want Bucky burdened, that’s all.

“Things are different now, you know?” Steve says and Bucky doesn’t know what that means and he tries desperately to wring something from it, but can’t. It’s what Natasha said too, and he doesn’t understand it. “I mean, really different. We could get married if we wanted.”

Bucky frowns at him.

“I mean you and me. _To_ _each other_.”

Steve stops walking. He shrugs. He spreads his hands. He talks.

“Look. Say somebody comes into your life when you’ve got nothing and they care about you, and they know everything bad about you and they stick around anyway.”

Bucky knows it’s not really a question, Steve’s not listening for an answer, just talking.

“Then they go away, and you miss them so bad you think you’re gonna die from it. So you do whatever it takes to find them, even stupid things. And you do find them. And it’s not like everybody says it ought to be but it’s good enough because it’s them, you know? That’s all that matters, all you can think about, being with that person. What do you call that?”

“Stop,” Bucky says. The world is skidding sideways on him.

“And then, just when you think you’ve got him and everything’s going to be okay, he goes away one more time. But this time it’s a place that’s harder to get to.” Steve's a bit breathless, voice getting louder. “I tried to follow and I couldn’t and believe me when I tell you, Buck, waking up was the worst damn day of my life. But then this…” Steve gestures, vaguely, taking in the city as he does, “And we’ve got this second chance. And so I ask myself, what else am I supposed to think? That God screwed up and put one of us in the wrong body, and it’s just too damn bad for us? I don’t believe that. I _don’t._ ”

“Stop,” he whispers again. He can’t think of anything else to say. He can’t think at all. He knew Steve would understand, maybe even forgive, but this is… it’s awful. “You don’t have to say this stuff. You don’t have to-” _lie_ “-pretend. I know-”

“Shut up and listen to me,” Steve snaps, looking up at him, frowning. “You got wax in your ears? I’m telling you I understand." He glares at Bucky, like maybe he'd like to punch his lights out. "I'm not pretending. I _understand._ And I'm telling you I feel the same way.”

Bucky stares at him and then shakes his head. "You don't gotta be kind about this Steve," he whispers.

“I’m not being kind, Buck, I’m being selfish." Steve sighs. "I know you’re not okay with it.”

Bucky laughs, an airless, soundless noise. Steve’s not smiling. His eyes are soft, sad.

“But I can wait,” he says. “Till you’re ready. I’ll wait.”

Never, Bucky thinks. He never even let himself pretend. Not once.

“I guess… I guess times have changed,” Bucky says quietly.

“Not really, Buck,” Steve answers. He gives Bucky a pointed look, and then starts walking again. Bucky follows after a second, and they walk together in silence for a while.

After about a block, Bucky clears his throat. It feels like his heart is stuck in there. “I…” he starts and wonders what the hell he’s going to say. “Look,” he tries again. “You said you’d wait but…" He sighs. "I guess the fact is, I’ve never been a real patient guy.” Steve laughs softly. Bucky chews a bit on his lip. “So, uh, how does now suit you?”

Steve exhales, he looks over at Bucky and smiles. “Suits me fine,” he says.

“Okay,” Bucky says. He stops walking again and looks at Steve, looking back at him. “I’m… I’m gonna kiss you, Rogers.”

Steve nods. “You go ahead and do that, Barnes.”

He does. There on the street. Broad daylight. Like it always should have been.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which beer and burgers are consumed.

Steve’s a little out of breath afterward. So is Bucky, if he’s honest, but for a different reason. “Maybe, uh,” he smiles at Steve, “Maybe we should get a cab back to your place. You don’t really look like you’re up to the walk.”

Steve smiles the way he used to, a little ashamed but agreeing. “Yeah. I don’t think I am either. Yelling at you took it out of me.”

They catch a cab and Steve gives his address and they settle into the back in silence. Steve slides his hand over Bucky’s and leans over and kisses him on the mouth again. Bucky sees the cabbie’s eyes. He knows the cabbie’s seen, but the guy doesn’t say anything, just pulls out into traffic and drives them home.

He supposes, if he’d ever given it any thought (which he hasn’t) he would have imagined they’d have gone back to Steve’s place and been sweet to one another all damn day, but Steve’s exhausted and Bucky’s head feels like somebody poured a jar of bees into it. He slumps in the back of the cab and stares at the street rolling by, and then remembers that without the serum, Steve’s probably sick.

“I gotta go to the pharmacy,” he says. Steve glances at him and Bucky looks back. “You need anything while I’m there?”

“What do you need from a pharmacy?” Steve asks, smiling faintly.

Bucky shrugs. “Johnnies,” he says. It’s the only thing that comes to mind and the instant he says it he feels a rush of blood in his face. Steve laughs.

“They won’t let you pick up my prescriptions. They don’t do that any more.”

Bucky shrugs. “Well.” He tries to make it sound casual, like he was only going to pick up the prescriptions if he was going anyway. Steve always hated being coddled. He’s forgotten how hard he used to work at hiding it. “Fine. You can get the johnnies when you go then.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Steve grins at him and Bucky knows that expression. He knows it. It’s a narrow, lopsided, curling, trouble-making expression. A face that launched a thousand fists. Here it comes.

“So…” he starts, and this is the point where Bucky always used to ask himself: Was Steve was born without a sense of self preservation, or did he get like that somehow? Because whatever Steve says now, it’s fight-picking material, and Steve is a skinny, sickly little punk, and Bucky Barnes used to be the god damned Winter Soldier.

“You don’t think that dozen you brought home are going to be enough?”

“Rogers,” Bucky says, “I will kill you.”

The grin gets bigger. “I mean, I like the news as much as anybody, Buck but I had no idea someone could be so excited by current events.”

“In your sleep, Rogers. I will kill you in your sleep.”

Steve laughs and the laughing turns into a cough. Bucky waits it out.

“Where did you find them anyway?” he asks.

“You left the bag in the bathroom the day you didn’t get kicked in the balls,” Steve says. “What happened that day, anyway?”

Bucky reflexively considers lying. Then he realizes. He looks at Steve, matches Steve’s big, punch-inducing grin with one of his own. “Oh, you’ll find out.”

 

 

They’re sweet to each other, but not like that. For all the time they spent in underpants and nothing else sweating on Brooklyn fire escapes in summer in the 30s and 40s, this is pretty unfamiliar and Bucky feels, well, frankly, shy. They touch hands, and when Bucky’s sitting on the couch, Steve comes and flops down beside him, and then, after a while, he lies down, head in Bucky’s lap and pretends to nap. Bucky sits still because he doesn’t want to move and lose this contact with Steve, but there’s nothing for him to do here, so he reads the two pages of warnings on the pamphlet that came with a box of medicine. Then he throws the whole thing away.

“Hey,” Steve says, opening his eyes. “I just bought those.”

“ _Side effects may include death_ , Steve. Death.”

“I am a superhero. I am used to risk.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and fishes it out of the wastebasket.

 

 

They take a cab up to Clint’s place, and the neighbourhood gets sootier and smokier as they go. At the building across the street from the one they were in for most of yesterday, Clint yells down from the roof and they go up the four flights of clean but squeaking stairs, and as they do, Steve takes his hand.

"Is that…?" Bucky was going to ask it that was okay, if it was tempting fate. Steve shrugs.

"Natasha's going to know right away no matter what," he murmurs. "It's her special power. Some people won't approve, but…" he shrugs.

Bucky laughs, a little nervously. "I don't care about other people, just as long as we don't spend the night explaining it to police. I think SHIELD would like it if I kept my head down a bit. You too probably."

"Yeah," Steve says, pushing through the door. "Probably."

 

Steve leads him by the hand out on the roof where there's a barbecue and about fifty people, kids, old folks, and everybody in between, as well as a couple cats and a big old one-eyed dog padding. He sees Sam and Natasha, sitting on folding chairs with a red cooler between them. Nearby, Clint is stationed behind a barbecue. He raises his tongs and points with them. "Help yourself."

Sam pulls a beer out of the ice and puts it in Bucky’s free hand. “Good to see you,” he says.

“Thanks. Likewise.” It’s been a long damn time since he had what you might call friends.

Natasha doesn’t get up, but she offers a beer up to Steve, and then she looks him up and down. “So is this the new Captain America?”

Steve shakes his head. “It’s not permanent, which I'm grateful for. I didn't miss asthma." He grins faintly. "And my shins are killing me. I thought I was done with growing pains."

“Well if you hadn't been such disasters, you would have been," Natasha says.

"Hey," Steve whines.

Now Natasha gets out of her chair, raising an eyebrow at Steve as she does. “Ruining buildings, de-seruming Steve, getting captured? That’s like the definition of a disaster.”

Sam shrugs. He makes a little noise, “ _Meh._ What is it they say? 'No plan survives contact with the enemy'.”

“Was there actually a plan?” she asks.

Steve and Sam look at each other, and then both look at Bucky, as if he’s supposed to get them out of this.

Bucky nods. “Oh, of course,” he says, raising his chin a little bit in an effort to out-stare Natasha. She gazes back at him placidly. “Of course there was a plan. What do you take us for?”

Steve says something to Sam but Bucky doesn't catch it. Natasha's watching him. He looks at her and she meets his eyes, looks down at the way Steve is clasping his hand and then back at him. She leans in close. "I told you you weren't really on the market," she murmurs in a voice too low for the others to hear. He smiles a little and she kisses him on the cheek.

"Okay, how many burgers?" Clint asks, coming around from the barbecue. He’s wearing an apron that says _Cap'n Dave's Abundantly Stuffed Quiver Hut,_ which, to Bucky anyway, sounds like a euphemism. Bucky frowns.

“Freebie,” Clint says, plucking at the apron. “Sam, two? Nat, two? Steve, you'll have three and ice cream. Barnes, what about you?" Bucky doesn't know. He's hungry but three hamburgers seems excessive. "I'll put on three. If you don't eat it one of us will." Clint goes back to the grill. "And, uh, this plan of yours?"

Bucky looks from face to face and shrugs. "You know," he says. "Just…"

Clint grins over the barbecue. "Just show up, punch bad guys?”

Sam smiles. “Yeah that was basically it.”

They laugh, and then go quiet, all of them, all at the same time, and Bucky feels the way time presses on them, even when they’re up here, among friends, out of danger, alive. He knows that for everyone he meets, there will always have to be a parting. Hydra took a lot from him, the pain of partings too. Except this one.

He raises his beer bottle. “Jim Morita,” he says.

Natasha nods. She lifts hers too. “Jim Morita. I didn’t know him, but I heard about some of the crazy stuff he did with the Commandos. I bet he’d be proud.”

The five of them say his name and clink bottles together and drink in silence.

“Yeah. He would have loved it,” Bucky says. He looks at Steve. “They all would have.”

Steve nods.

“Could you imagine,” Bucky starts, and something about the flood of memories makes him smile, “Oh my god. Could you imagine if they could have seen? If anybody from back then had seen the crap we did.” He starts laughing, and can’t stop. “Sam, you… you threw me out of that room like…”

Sam grins. "Sure did."

“He threw me out of that room like I was getting tossed out of a speakeasy, Steve. You shoulda seen. Grabbed me by my collar and my belt and…” He mimes it. “Head over heels.”

“And then,” Sam says, “when I asked him if he was okay, he opens his mouth and, _blag_ , mouthful of blood. Like a horror movie.”

“Of course I bit my tongue,” Bucky says, “you threw me face first down the stairs.”

“Well, you’re not going to do any harm to that mug,” Steve murmurs into his beer bottle.

“Oh, Rogers, you are one to talk.”

“Speaking of broken faces,” Natasha says. Clint shrugs.

“Yeah, the nose hurts like hell. It was already broken, I don’t see why they had to punch it again.”

“What was that you said when we came in?” Steve asks, “‘Okay, this looks bad?’ Six big guys about to beat the stuffing out of you? _Looks bad?_ That’s not how I would have described it.”

“And you, ‘ _Listen son_ ’?” Clint says back, accusatory.

Natasha turns to Steve. “Really? You ‘son’d him?” Steve shrugs. She says and shakes her head. “And anyway Clint, why you were in that basement getting your spleen tenderized by Russian mobsters? I mean, I know you're annoying but…”

“Actually, they were going to cut off my fingers.”

“Story,” Sam says. “Let’s have the whole thing. You promised.”

Clint sighs. He passes the flipper and the apron to someone else. “You mind?” he asks and the girl shrugs and takes up position by the barbecue. “Okay, gather round little children, gather round and listen to your wise Uncle Clint. He’s gonna tell you a story with a lesson, and that lesson is, _Never fuck around with the Russians_.”

Natasha smirks. Bucky grins. They sit and listen. Clint tells a good story. It takes three beers.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky is revealed to be something of a modern man.  
> (Optional smutty chapter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dies*

Night falls and they’re still up on the roof. All of the kids and most of the old folks have gone to bed, and the dogs and the cats have settled down. Bucky and Steve are lying on their backs on a blanket somebody left behind, and the stars are probably out, but there’s too much light from the street and the buildings, and the floodlights on the building they destroyed where the fire department is still putting out hot spots.

Clint comes over. He looks down at them, and then up at the blank sky, and down again. “Stargazing?” he asks.

Steve grins. “Yeah.”

“The rest of us are packing it in. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Just close the door when you leave and make sure it latches.”

Steve nods.

Clint nods. “See you guys… maybe next time I’m getting the crap kicked out of me.” They shake hands, and then Clint waves and goes.

Steve slides back down beside Bucky.

“Hey Steve,” Bucky says, “without the serum, are you drunk?”

“No,” Steve answers.

“Good. I was all set to be jealous.”

Steve grins. “Maybe it’s better we can’t get drunk. You imagine? Drunk super soldiers,” he shakes his head, “I think we do enough damage when we’re sober.”

They both laugh, softly, lying there together. Steve’s fingers trail over his arm. “We’re really alone up here aren’t we?” he asks. Bucky listens. There’s the endless sounds of a city, and the noises from the fire department, and the sound of Steve’s breathing. Distant noises.

“Yeah, unless Natasha’s still on watch.”

Steve shakes his head. He turns to look at Bucky. For a second, Bucky thinks he going to say something, but instead Steve slides closer and kisses him. Warm, a soft, a little bit beer-flavoured. Bucky kisses back, hands sliding over Steve, to find his hip and pull him flush against him. Steve makes a pleased noise, and pushes up against him a little. Bucky, even if he _had_ made himself some kind of stupid promise that he wouldn't rush this kind of thing (which he hadn't) feels like that's a good enough reason to pushes back against Steve. And that just makes him want more of Steve's mouth, more of his hands, more of everything.

Steve's hands slide down to his hips, then under his shirt and light like fire on his skin. It's been a long time since the hands on him were welcome. A lifetime. Two. There are some things he should probably tell Steve. About before the war, when he was chasing skirts and ass, about what he’s done since he came back to New York, and about the things that happened when he was captive.  


“Buck?” Steve whispers. He realizes he’s stopped moving, gone still. He works up a smile.

“Sorry,” he says. “Got thinking.”

“About what?”

He shakes his head a little. “Just… up till recently it wasn’t up to me. Nothing was.”

Steve nods. He slides his hand up and down Bucky’s ribs, like he’s relearning the position of the muscles and the bone.

“I know,” he says. “We can just look at the sky if you want.”

Bucky grins. “You do that Steve, you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ll come back in about ten minutes.”

Steve laughs softly in the dark. “I mean it,” he says. “SHIELD’s going to want you to work for them, and Tony Stark will probably drop in and offer you a spot with the Avengers, but… You’re free, you don’t ever have to do those things again. Any of them. And I can wait, like I said. I will. It's up to you.”

“No gods, no masters, just me, huh?”  


“Something like that.”

He threads one hand through Steve’s short hair. “I don't want to wait," he says. He kisses Steve again, because he can now and he never could before. "And," he hesitated, a little embarrassed but still… "There’s something I want to do. With you. If it’s…”

Steve smiles, lopsided, and his eyebrows go up. “Oh yeah?”

"Yeah."

"You need an engraved invitation? Or can I just say I'm interested?"

Bucky laughs. He exhales, and kisses Steve again, and his hands go down to Steve’s hips. He undoes the belt and Steve squirms halfway out of the jeans that are a little too big for him.

Bucky can see him in gradations of light and shadow. Not completely visible, but enough thanks to all the ambient light. For a second he feels exposed, then remembers they’re behind a high safety wall, and the buildings that are close enough to have a vantage point were empty anyway. He rolls between Steve’s legs and pulls the shoes and jeans and underwear off him.

Steve shivers under his touch. He slides his hands up and down Steve’s thighs, then over his erection. Steve pulls in a breath and moves his hips up hard against Bucky’s hand. Bucky could groan, watching him move like that. His body is so tense that everything aches. He lowers his head to Steve, licks him, and Steve makes a little noise and then stops the sound.

Bucky moves, tongue, mouth. Steve’s hands tangle in his hair. Like this. Mid-summer. New York. Somewhere hidden, somewhere secret. It’s okay. Steve’s been waiting. He slides his hands under Steve and pulls him up, so he can swallow him.

 _Ah,_ Steve whispers, the way he sometimes does if he touches something cold. Then, _Mmm._

Like this. He slides his hands away again, undoes his own belt and his fly. He’s already slick at the head of his cock and the piercing, he’d forgotten about it, rolls under his fingers. He grips himself like he usually would, and the piercing amplifies everything. He groans against Steve and Steve makes a little noise in return.

He strokes himself, and sucks the man under him, Steve under him, really Steve this time, and Steve sighs and sighs out _Bucky_

_Bucky, god…_

And then Steve groans loud, arching upward, and Bucky closes his eyes and reminds himself this is Steve in his mouth, Steve saying his name, saying, _James,_ and Bucky didn’t know he wanted to hear that but he does, _James, James,_ whispered between stuttering breaths when he comes.

Bucky pulls away, wipes his mouth, lowers his head, hand tightening on himself. This is only going to take a second.

“Wait,” Steve whispers. “Wait, wait, wait.” Steve’s mouth is open, still breathless, and even in the low light Bucky can see the flush in his face. “Let me.”

His heart flops over in his chest. “You want to?”

“Yeah. Yeah. What you just did. Nobody’s ever done that for me before. I didn’t know you liked that too.”

Bucky smiles. “Well, Steve, I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises,” he says, and shucks off his pants and underwear.

Steve sighs, he gets in close, and then he says, “Sweet Jesus, what is _that?_ ”

Bucky looks down at himself. “Oh this? Never seen a… a… an apadrudablahblahblah before?”

Steve stares. “You got it put through your johnson and you don’t even know what it’s called?”

“I didn’t need to know what it’s called,” Bucky says, leaning in close. “They had a book. With pictures.”

“How’s it feel?” Steve asks, catching his mouth, kissing him.

“Real good right now.”

“Well okay then,” Steve answers. He lowers his head. “Well okay,” he says again, and his mouth, wet and hot, closes over Bucky. He groans and leans back and grips Steve’s hair.

“Holy hell, Steve-” he starts but that’s all he manages to say because he's drunk on the sight of pale hair under his fingers and it feels so good that it’s short circuiting the part of his brain that makes words, so he’s just making noises while he shakes and comes and comes. Steve surfaces again, and looks into his eyes. His smile is secret, wry, a little bit smug.

“Still with us, Sergeant?” he asks.

“Barnes is out. Call back in ten,” he answers. Steve chuckles.

Bucky stares for a while, till his head kicks back into gear. Then he looks at Steve, and for the first time in a long time, for the first time since coming out of a drug-filled haze on a table to find Steve standing over him, he knows what it’s like to be happy again. He leans against Steve. “Is this really it?” he asks. “How it’s going to be? Me and you, and blowing shit up?”

Steve laughs. “Maybe a little less blowing things up," he says. “But knowing you, yeah. This is probably it.”

"Good," he says. "Good."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gents, you have all been great sports. Thank you for going on this trip to Crazytown with me. 
> 
> I did this story for fun, because I ship Stucky so hard I had to Take Steps or I was just going to be crying into my salad all the time, but I don't just do fanfiction, I write other stories too. You can find me over on [Tumblr](http://tamthewriter.tumblr.com/) or on twitter @tammacneil if you want to know more!
> 
> Once again, thanks a bunch. I hope I made all of you cry.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] No Gods, No Masters, Just Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3479513) by [OddityBoddity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity), [Val Mora (valmora)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora)




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